


Flowers grow well on corpses

by jeza_red



Category: Bloodborne (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Gore and Blood, M/M, Multi, Slash, a bit of grave humour, a lovely english darling slowly dying of consumption, albeit temporary, everyone will be mentioned in a way, gilbert's pov, it's Yharnam after all, male hunter/gilbert, this will be sad and tragic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-25
Updated: 2016-05-02
Packaged: 2018-05-16 05:17:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5815660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeza_red/pseuds/jeza_red
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gilbert is ill. Well, more than that, he's dying. But he's alright with that, he knew that will happen.<br/>What harm will it do if he talks to this one perpetually lost Hunter from time to time?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm revolted with the fact that there's so very little BB fics with Gilbert=___=  
> Come on, poeple! Get to it!  
> Changed the name. The old one was a placeholder, really ;]

The fever didn’t go away this time. He diligently took prescribed medicine and drank hot tea with raspberry syrup and honey until he was sure it will start dripping from his ears. He stayed under the covers, curled into a cocoon of thick blankets, trying to sweat the sickness out. But nothing was helping. Not even blood.

But he stopped taking the blood days ago. It was hard, he never realised how dependent he grew to be on it. His body demanded a new vial the moment the old one was processed and it concerned him.

Many things in Yharnam concerned him, but he hoped that at least his own person could be trusted… Apparently, his hope was misplaced once again.

He sweated red and silver for a day and a night after the last injection, and it only settled him in his resolve not to use the blood _ever again_. It gave him relief back in the day, it gave him hope when he needed it most – but lately it gave him nothing, but headaches and muscle cramps. How could Yharnamites imbibe on this stuff like it was liquor?

Well, maybe that was the case? The after-effects of the blood were quite similar to the ones a strong alcohol brought – euphoria, soothing of pains, increased courage… among other, more questionable ones. So it only made sense that abstaining from it would be similarly unpleasant as abstaining from liqueur.

Gilbert found the connotations of that comparison unpleasant. He would never suspect himself to fall a prey to an addiction of any kind. Ah, the holy blood of Yharnam was such a sinister thing.

He knew it, somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew that the existence of a panacea able to cure all illnesses was an impossibility, that there had to be a tag with a price hanging at the end of it… but at the time he couldn't care less. Fear of death trumped all.

He wasn’t aware yet that there were worse things to fear in the world than death.

Now he knew and that knowledge was bittersweet. He didn’t regret the time he's had managed to wrestle from the disease, not one bit… maybe he’d like to spend it in a better company, but still…

These were empty divagations now, things to pass the time as he boiled from the inside in his too narrow bed. The mattress was flattened with age and use, and Gilbert didn’t count the bruises on his shins from bumping on the sideboards anymore. They were just another aspect of his nearing end. Like the fact that he hasn’t changed from his nightshirt in a while now or the fact that the woman who rented him the small room stopped talking to him. She kept bringing him food and drink, of course, and kept the room clean – but he’s never seen her nowadays. Just every once in a while Gilbert would wake from the magline and see a plate by his bedside or that the floor has been swept, - all the little touches a proud housekeeper left in her wake.

He reasoned with himself that he had to be a poor sight to witness, what with his hair messy and his face red and swollen, but a part of him remained unconvinced that the woman would avoid him for that reason alone.

A week after it has started, the fever broke a little – not entirely, but he was able to think clearly for the first time in a while. He could sit up and take stock of himself, and wince at the feeling of a sweaty nightshirt sticking to his chest and back. The room was stuffy and the light falling in through the only window was tinged orange, meaning that the day was slowly coming to an end.

On the tiny rickety table by the bed he's found a bowl of cold soup, a cup of water and a couple slices of bread. From the looks of it, they’ve been there for a while – the soup was pulled over with an unappetising film and bread was half-dried. Would it be that the housekeeper finally grew bored with wasting supplies on her sickly guest and decided to simply wait until he either gets downstairs on his own or finally expires?  

With a bitter chuckle Gilbert picked at the food, but his stomach felt cramped and a few bites of bread and a sip of water were more than enough to make him feel nauseous. Well, if not food, then maybe he could at least change out of his dirty clothes and freshen up a little. There should still be water left in the bowl on the dresser. He could also do with a shave.

With a heave he’s managed to haul himself to the dresser and went about washing and changing. Even if he was to die today, he’d prefer to be a presentable corpse. There was enough ugliness on Yharnam’s cemeteries already…

It wasn’t easy. He cut his face half a dozen times, his hands shook so much. Thankfully, the cuts didn't bleed more than a drop each. At one point he had to half-lean on the furniture to stay in the vicinity of the mirror. He’d like a haircut, but that was an unnecessary expense in his state.

Pulling a fresh shirt on was a struggle in itself, even bigger than trying to pretend that he didn’t see all the items that were missing from the shelves. He didn’t - shouldn’t – care anymore. These were just silly trinkets. At least the one good suit he owned was still there, probably in case…

Well, the housekeeper could stuff it; he wasn’t going to make anyone's life any easier. The last she could do for him was to redress his corpse before the Church's hands took it away. He'd like to spend his last moments in whatever comfort he could scrounge up, thank you.

The room was small and soon enough it grew unpleasantly stuffy, but opening a window turned to be more difficult than it seemed. Gilbert’s legs turned to jelly, the moment he let go of the dresser and tried to take a step his balance left him. He grasped at the headboard of the bed to save himself from crashing to the floor and, even though he was alone, a hot blush of embarrassment bloomed in his sallow cheeks.

God, he wasn't a cripple! He was a man in his prime, stumbling like that was humiliating!

The fever had to make it so, or the prolonged bed rest. He could…

It was hot in the room, or it was his own body that was heating up again. The idea to open the window and let some fresh air in grew into a pressing need.

On unsteady legs he's managed to push his way to the parapet and even reach the hatch. And just as the cast mechanism clicked open, Gilbert’s knees went from under him.

The old armchair took his weight with a startled creak.

Evening breeze pushed at the threadbare curtains invading the room, cooling sweat on the face of its only occupant. However, tears were much harder to banish.

So, he could not walk anymore. He could not stand up. He could barely move his legs, even the bruises seemed to disappear from his awareness and he could not map them by feeling alone.

Well, that was to be expected, Gilbert tried to reason with himself. It was the way things went with people in his state. If just… it wasn't that bad, all in all. It wasn't the worst spot to be in, at least he was upright and not buried in the gross mess of his bed. There was a book he'd never finished tucked between the armrest and the seat of the chair. And he had some fresh air even though the view he could access was limited…

Logical reasoning seemed to do its job and soon enough Gilbert blinked the last drops of salt away. It was alright, in the end, _it could be worse_. He could be like those other poor bastards of Yharnam…

Wind picked up momentarily and the window creaked, curtains bloated and a new smell sneaked through - one that Gilbert has learned to recognize quickly: the sickly sweet odour of incense.

Was it burning today? Was it… the night?

He looked around, searching, but his journal was left at the dresser and in it was his calendar. But then again, what good will it do even if he can reach it? He didn't mark days when he was feverish...

And just as if to ease his mind, another smell wafted in - twisting his insides into knots of horror. It was… _were…_ the pyres.

So it was the night. The Hunt was on, even though... the sun was still up? And the pyres have been lit already?

No wonder his housekeeper didn’t visit him today, if it was this bad already…

A fit of coughs overtook him when the two smells merged together into something that, for Gilbert, became synonymous with his whole experience in Yharnam. Decay masked by sweetly herbs, rotting corpses covered with flowers.

A very, very clean charnel house.

It almost felt fitting that _this_ would be his last night, that the last sounds he’d hear would be the howls of beasts and the last thing he…

Three soft knocks against the glass broke that anguished train of thought.

If he could jump up and move away from the window, he would. People just didn't wander about when the incense burners were lighted. Not normal people, anyway.

“Hey…” The voice that whispered through the crack in the window did not belong to a diseased. It was low and raspy, true, but it sounded coherent when the man asked. “Is anyone in there? I think I’m lost.”

The accent - it wasn’t Yharnam’s accent. Another foreigner?

Gilbert grasped the armrests of the chair and pushed himself as high as he could manage - which, admittedly, wasn’t very high - to see even a glimpse of the stranger. The only part he could see was the top of his head and… the smell has changed.

_Oh._

Well. So that’s how it was.

Well…

“Hey, anyone in there?”

“Yes…” Gilbert rasped back before he even thought about it. He scolded himself immediately. The Hunt was not his business; quite on the contrary, he should not mix in with the Hunters.

But at the same time there was something in the voice of that stranger that seemed familiar. Maybe it was the cadence of his words? Or the way he accented his O’s. It was not the English of his own town, but – it wasn’t Yharnam’s. And that seemed to be enough.

“You’re a Hunter, yes? And not one from around here, either.” He wished he could stand up and see his guest face to face, because the startled gasp that his statement caused was surely accompanied by an amusing expression. “It’s the smell,” he explained. “And the accent gives you away.”

“Eh…?”

A sound of a loudly drawn breath reached him and Gilbert chuckled – and then broke out into another fit of wrecking coughs. No doubt the stranger was sniffing himself to check for the ‘smell’. From what he's heard, the Hunters weren't usually aware of the scent they gave off.

It wasn’t exactly unpleasant, - not like the septic odor that always surrounded the Church’s men and women, - but neither was it nice. At least it was still evening and the scent was fresh and unblemished with… additions that usually came about when the Hunt began for good.

“Do not worry,” Gilbert assured, trying to sound kind and feeling like he was back in the Academy, talking to his students. “It’s not revolting.”

“I will have to trust you on that,” the Hunter said. “I can hardly smell anything out of ordinary on my person.”

“Yes, let's leave it at that.” Eh, in for a penny, in for a pound, then. “By the way, I’m Gilbert, a fellow outsider.”

A Hunter or not, Gilbert felt his lungs tightening over the little air he could breathe in and so distraction was called for.

 

 

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another chapter in. I have it all written down, pretty much, just need to type it into the file from the notebook>_>  
> A careful eye will see that I'm changing Gilbert's dialogues a bit to sound more natural and appropriate to the conversation;) Still, he's the same lovely English darling we all know and love.

 

“You’ve had to have a fine time of it. Yharnam has a way of treating guests.”

The Hunter’s laugh was grim and a bit hysterical, but genuine enough that Gilbert didn’t mention it.

“Yes, you can say that,” the man said. “Though calling anything in this city ‘fine’ is a bit of a stretch.”

Oh good, someone with a sense of humour.

“Where did you come from, then?” Gilbert asked. “I don’t think I recognise your accent…”

The pause after that was long. Gilbert would be prone to assume that the stranger has left if not for the barely-there sounds of movement – cloth rubbing against the bricks, a squeak of the sole on cobblestones.

When the Hunter finally spoke, there was no trace of amusement left in his voice. “I’m afraid that when I told you I'm lost, it have also been an understatement. My problem is a tad bigger than that.”

“…does it also have something to do with the fact that you’ve yet to introduce yourself?” Gilbert chanced, carefully choosing the words. He’s assumed that it was just something that Hunters didn’t do, but it seemed that he was mistaken.

“It does. It would be fair, wouldn’t it? Sadly…”

Yes, it was sad. Memory loss wasn't unheard of in Yharnam – it wasn't even that rare. One of the side effects of the blood curation, but no one told you that out loud in case long ears of the Church overheard. But it was known, it was whispered about; and Gilbert, - by the grace of living in a house of a chatty old woman, - was often privy to those whispers. To the stories of fathers forgetting the names of their children; of people who went out to the market and couldn’t go back because they’ve forgot where their houses were. The blood-drunks, healthy and strong, but struggling to remember how to buckle their shoes.

Strange, it was easier to be critical when blood wasn’t flowing in his veins.  Or maybe it was the closeness of death that made one’s sight clearer?

“I will call you a Hunter, then?” He asked, trying to salvage the flagging mood. “I don’t know any of your sort out there, so I won’t be confused.”

“If you wish,” the Hunter answered flippantly. “I will call you by your name, in that case. Even if I have a feeling, that somewhere in the world a mother of mine is despairing over my lack of proper manners. I’d shake your hand, alas, the bars are in the way…”

Yes, a sense of humor was appreciated.

“That is quite alright, I don't think I could get up if I wanted to. What little time I have left would be only wasted on proper manners.”

I would do him well to borrow some of it, because that joke was a bit too grave.

Heh, _grave_. What a riot he was being today!

Another wave of coughing helped Gilbert save his face and for the first time since the illness took hold of his lungs, he was vaguely grateful for it.

He was saved from further embarrassment by a beastly screech that made the hair on his head stand up.

The beast had to be large to release a sound this powerful. And it wasn't even the night yet!

Gilbert heard his guest step away from the window, probably to look around in fright or maybe some other darker emotion, who knew with Hunters? The important thing was that the he didn't leave right away.

A mechanical sound of gears twisting ended up in a decisive clunk of parts snapping into place. He tried not to imagine one of the gruesome weapons he's heard of unfolding behind the flimsy barrier of his window. He's been told that the real Hunters used things with nasty teeth and serrated blades, things that made their prey _bleed_ before it died _._

“Don't worry, they rarely come up here,” he tried to reassure the both of them. “Not many beasts seems to have mastered the skill of climbing stairs.”

“It's not the beasts I'm concerned with,” the Hunter answered tightly. “There's something wrong with the people of this town, too.”

“This town is cursed,” Gilbert whispered words he wished someone had said to him two years ago. “Whatever your reasons, you should plan a swift exit. Whatever you're looking for inside of these walls will probably bring you more harm than good, anyways.”

It wasn't easy to say, the ever prevalent fear of being overheard by the wrong person tightened his throat, but once the words were spoken, the situation was out of his hands. He had warned the man, he could do little else.

“Thank you for the advice, friend.” The Hunter said after a minute of tense silence. “I only wish it was this easy, had I not been burdened with a task to complete…” Firearms were rare in Gilbert’s home town, but the clicking he's heard just now sounded like one being reloaded. “I'd like to ask a question, if you don't mind. Have you heard about a thing called Paleblood?”

Taken by surprise by the sudden change of subject, Gilbert echoed back at the Hunter: “Pale blood?” Then he got a grip on himself and gave it some thought. “No, I can't say that I have. But… if it's blood you're interested in, then the Healing Church is your best bet.”

A strange thing to tell a Hunter. Didn't they know about it already? Maybe this one forgot it along with his name?

“Where do I find that healing church?”

The lack of capital letters and proper reverence was obvious and Gilbert felt a spike of fear and at the same time his sympathy for the man grew unexpectedly. Oh, to be so bold as to not fear the shadow of the Church! It was either a sign of great courage or another symptom of crippling amnesia.

“Across the valley to the east of Yharnam... you'll have to find a way to the great bridge...” It felt unpleasant to send the man into the clutches of the Hunt, but Gilbert found that he wanted to help. “Cross it and with little luck you'll enter the Cathedral Ward. That's a part of the city controlled by the Church, so you'd do better to be careful out there. Normally, the locals wouldn't even let you close to it, but today is the Night of the Hunt and, well, you're a Hunter… I don't imagine that many would dare to stand in your way.“

“I don't imagine I'd let them.” Again, the humor was back, dark but there.

“Well, yes. Inside the Cathedral Ward lies the old Grand Cathedral. People say it is the source of the Church’s special blood.”

“ _People_?” The Hunter mused. “If only they've answered my questions this easily.”

“Ah, true, but my landlady is an older woman and, as they say, old women have big ears…”

“...and long tongues,” the Hunter finished for him with another chuckle. “I will try to knock some answers out of that church, then. Thank you, friend, you've been a great help.”

“I highly doubt that,” Gilbert shook his head, trying to stifle another fit of coughing he felt approaching. “But... I'm willing to help if there’s anything that can be done.”

“Trust me, your presence alone is enough,” the man insisted. “Just knowing that I'm not the last sane person in this place… Well, I'm sure you understand.” Another click. Was this the safety on the gun this time? “Are you going to be all right here on your own?”

The concern was touching, if misplaced. “I will be. There's little that can harm me any more, after all. ”

“Yes, I imagine,” was his dry answer. “When we meet again, I hope to hear some better jokes from you.”

What? _Again_?

“What…?” Gilbert gaped at the window, struck. Was the man implying…? “Hey,  you mean…” to come back? Why?

But this time there was no answer. No matter how he stained his ears, Gilbert could not catch a sound out of order. The stranger had left.

But said that he will be back.

Gilbert wasn't sure what he wanted it to meant to him.

 

 

*******

 

 

There was a reason why he didn't finish that book before and it was enough for to read one page to be reminded of it.

It was _dreadfully_ _boring_. The landlady brought it one day when he complained of boredom and left it on his dresser. He’s read a few first pages and it made boredom seen attractive. The book was some sort of a country romance that he's imagined to be popular amongst bored middle class ladies. A pretty orphaned girl, a handsome rich lad, a series of contrived plot twists that kept bringing them together… all the tricks that ensnared the girls dreaming of romance and had little to no value to men like Gilbert. Well, if he did pay a bit more attention to all these rather detailed descriptions of the male lead’s muscular frame, that was between him and the book.

But that was then. Now, he dived into the convoluted plot and did all he could to stay interested in it.

Coughing fits came and went with exhausting regularity, leaving him short of breath, with the muscles of his stomach and back strained and hurting. A few times he tasted blood on his tongue and tried not to panic, tried to tell himself that this was nothing new.

He kept reading to stop thinking of it. To stop thinking of the fact that he was trapped in this chair because his legs simply stopped working. To stop thinking about the Hunter that visited him and wishing that his parting words were meant to be kept.

For all Gilbert knew, he might have imagined the whole encounter. It could be just a feverish dream that his sickly mind wished to entertain him with.

A tall, dark Hunter of the beasts with a low raspy voice, that wished to see him safe? Of course. Why not? He could even imagine that the man was handsome and cultured.

Gilbert was as safe as one could be in Yharnam. There was an ancient flame sprayer that the landlady left in the room on his first Night of the Hunt ( _and that's when he's got his first inkling that the city was more peculiar than he’d been told_ ) and he was already dying a slow painful death. What could be worse than that?

He wondered how his landlady was doing. He hasn't heard any sounds from her rooms upstairs. Was she even home or did she go to her sister's house for the night?

The sounds coming from the outside, for a change, weren't reassuring in the slightest. Usually, the patrols kept it together for longer before surrendering to bloodlust. Ah, the evening seemed to last for hours…

“That was a truly tortured sigh,” a voice at the window stated with humor. “I hope it's not a reaction to my presence.”

Gilbert was lucky that he was already sitting, otherwise he'd have fainted of fright.

“ _You came back!_ ” He blurted out before he’s managed to stop himself.

The book, forgotten, fell to the floor.

“I…  well, I seem to end up in the area more often than not. This city is a maze.” To Gilbert’s ears it sounded like an excuse. “I thought that there may be something to it and decided to stop by.”

“Have you managed to enter the Cathedral Ward?”

He was not aware that he feared for the man until he said these words. The Ward was a forbidden zone for anyone not affiliated with the Church, it was a particularly dangerous place during the Hunt.  

“...no. There are… eh, I think that the longer I stay in this place the more confused I become. I was waylaid by a torch wielding mob… if I never again see a pitchfork in my life, I will die a happy man.”

Torches? Pitchforks?

The patrols would attack a Hunter? They'd _dare_?

“One good thing you can say about the Yharnamites is that they sure are persistent; I was chased all the way to the bridge.”

“But how did you…” Gilbert rasped. “The beasts…”

“The beasts are dead. All of them.” But probably not as dead as the voice making that statement. “I can say with surety, friend, wild animals seem much less frightening after the third pitchfork you have to pull out of your gut - that special courtesy call of the ever-living citizens, I'm sure. I hoped that you may know of any roundabout way to the Ward, since the bridge seems to be blocked off.”

A shiver that went through Gilbert’s frame triggered another series of wrenching coughs. “A… pitchfork.. out of...?” He croaked, incredulous, and strained to calm his breathing. “What...?” For a moment he could not draw breath until he coughed up and the sleeve of his shirt blossomed with red. “ _Ah…_ ” The taste was thick and cloying, and the pain flared up to an insufferable level. “ _Ah…_ I…”

“Gilbert!” The Hunter called. “Breathe slowly and stop trying to speak for god’s sake!” The bars protecting the window rattled under a firm push. “ _Damn it_! Wait, there's a clinic not far from here, maybe the doctor… “

“... No… I…”

The was no point in going there, he wanted to say. No point in worrying about him. It was just cough… surely, in a moment his breath will return.

“Wait here and don't die! I'll be right back!”

 _Stay_ , he wanted to say, but before he's managed to catch enough air the sound of soles hitting metal bars of the emergency ladder faded and then disappeared completely. The Hunter was gone again.

Smoke from the incense burner entered the room and slowly soothed the worst of the ache, and very gradually Gilbert relaxed. He leaned back and counted the gasps, tried to take every third one deeper than the rest.

_Wait here and don't die, huh?_

He didn't want it to feel nice, hearing someone say it, to even go as far as to order it. He didn't want to feel like he wants to listen.

He had to doze off, because he didn't hear when the Hunter came back, before knocking on the window roused him and that characteristic smell hit his nose.

This time there was blood mixed in it and Gilbert felt his ribs constrict.

“Friend?” The Hunter called, concern clear in his voice. “Are you…”

“Still alive,” he managed to get out.

A sigh of relief. “ _Good_.”

Alright, it was _a little_ touching. “How was your luck at the clinic?” He asked though he already knew the answer. “You've been gone… a while.”

“Lady doctor was unhelpful. But she gave me a vial of blood that’s supposed to be special in some way.”

“You should use it with caution,” Gilbert advised, impressed. “The stronger it is, the more…. precious people find it.”

Doctor Iosefka was a holy woman in the eyes of some, though even her skill could only go as far in helping him. But her blood was expensive to buy and hard to obtain. To just be given a vial...

With a spike of shock Gilbert realised that a powerful need awakened in him at the thought of the blood. A yearning so strong that he could swear that he’d felt the taste of it in his mouth. What, in heavens?

“I brought it for you.”

“What?”

“I have enough vials to last me through the night and - _ways_ \- of procuring more if the need arises. If this is something of better quality, take it.”

“No.” The single word had cost him more than he expected. His mouth started to water and his heart trashed against his ribs. Gods... 

“No? But, you…”

“No!” He was going insane, like the people of this city. He was not addicted! “I can’t… It won’t help me any more…” Who was he trying to convince? Himself or the Hunter?

“But…”

“Don't you... worry about me!” He snapped, much harsher than he intended. “Your situation… is much more dire than mine.. is it? Listen then!” His lungs were constricting again. The air grew thin. He was ready to do anything to get the Hunter and his blood away from the window. The smell of him alone was… oh gods, the smell! Was it…? “There’s another way… rather colourful, but... If you follow the aqueduct… across the valley… it's not pleasant, but you... have little choice now…”

Silence.

Did the stranger leave again? Was he too hard? Did he insult him?

He just wanted to…

“Can you shoot a rifle?”

The odd question startled him into another fit.

“No, I… I’m a scholar, I’ve never… Why...?”

 _I can’t breathe, please go,_ he should plead, but didn’t.

Something landed on the parapet outside, something heavy and made of metal,  if was  followed by a harsh whisper.

“I would feel much better knowing that you’re not left here on your own, defenceless.”

Oh.

“I’m… not.” His eyes fell on the flame sprayer. “I’m… armed… go. Just… go...”

_Please. I can’t breathe._

“I will be seeing you, then.” A beat. “Hopefully. Stay well, friend.”

The steps retreated; almost instantly the incense wafted back into the room and the coughing eased up.

Ah, who was the one with a bad sense of humour, now?  

 

 

 

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gore happens in this one. And a lot of pain.  
> Sorry about that.  
> I move stuff a lot - happening-wise, because while certain order of situations works well in a game, in prose it comes out rather stiff, and I waned to focus more on the after-effects of these situations than the actions themselves. Also, time in Yharnam is hardly linear and Gilbert is in fever induced delirium most of the time, so he can't be really trusted as a narrator either.  
> Mrs.Winslow’s Soothing Syrup - it is a real concoction and, oh boy, them Victorians!

The fever spiked up. Gilbert felt hot and cold by turns, forever struggling to either undo the buttons of his shirt or rushing to pull the robe tight around himself. He still wasn’t hungry – he might have been thirsty for a moment there, but it was a fleeting thing, thank goodness.

Pale shred of the sky he could see through the curtains turned darker and darker, from orange to red, to pale violet and dark blue. When the night fell, Gilbert was only vaguely aware of it.

“The incense is burning out in your lamp,” voice of a stranger informed him through the window. Chime of glass on iron followed. “Here, I will fill it up for you.”

“Where… did you…?” The incense was expensive and hard to come by outside of specific vendors contracted by the Church. It was quite impossible to acquire it during the Hunt itself.

That left a very few options of which very few Gilbert dared to contemplate.

“Do not worry, the houses were already empty.” The Hunter spoke in carefully measured tones whenever he mentioned citizens of Yharnam. As if his grudge extended far above the beasts, to the people who were yet to become them. “Why waste good herbs?”

“Someone… may come… back?” The fever, Gilbert realised, made him quite optimistic.

The Hunter had no such things hindering him. “No one will.”

Ah, was the night getting to the man? Was it the Hunt?

“And I thought… it’s me who’s… dying,” Gilbert mused from his armchair. “Yet you… steal my gloom.”

“…forgive me, my friend.” Genuine regret coloured the man's voice at this gentle admonishment. “I did not come here to make you upset. I’ll try to abstain from dragging the mood down even more.”

 _Why did you come, then_ , Gilbert wanted to ask. Probably should ask. But he was sick and common sense did not go hand in hand with his affliction. He wasn’t going to drive the man away.

“What troubles you… good Hunter?” He asked instead, using the words he’s heard Yharnamites use whenever addressing a Hunter.

It was strange and a bit disturbing: the way they disregarded a whole caste of people and were deathly afraid of them at the same time. They’ve bent themselves backwards to appease their protectors, but as soon as door appeared between them, ‘good hunter’ became a mockery.

So unlike to what he was used to back in London. The Yard was generally respected and even if some less than kosher elements of society hated it, few dared to openly air their misgivings.

“You can… unburden yourself…” Such daring. He was quite shameless in this state. “There’s little else I… can do for you… but listen.”

“Good Hunter, eh?” Finally, a chuckle. “Such good I’m doing for this city, running around and spilling blood. Although, she’s said that’s all I’m _supposed_ to do, so…”

“She?”

“I’ve met another Hunter. She’s, _heh_ , she’s old and prickly like a patch of brambles, but her words give me strange comfort.”

The bars outside the window squeaked at the joints and Gilbert could imagine his guest leaning on them like a young student would do to discuss things of great importance with his classmates. With crossed arms and relaxed posture, he would be just like dozens of young men he’d seen and taught back at the University…

“Everything is strange in this place.” The Hunter continued. “It seems like I’m walking in a dream and wherever I turn a new nightmare stands in my way… There’s a child,” he said, suddenly changing  the subject. “I stumbled upon her window much like I did on yours, just after exiting the aqueducts.”

“A child…?”

“Little girl, with a button nose and straw-pale locks.” There was fondness in the Hunter’s voice that melted a bit of Gilbert’s heart no matter how much he tried to fight it. He was dying, he hardly had the time and energy to… and this was a _Hunter_! “She stopped me, because she smelled this thing you all talk about… Heh, I may be convinced that it really exists and I stink to high heavens… Fearless little thing leaned out even though I was covered in blood and sewer filth… My God, you really don’t want to know what lives down there in the stale water - oh, apologies, I’m stretching the definitions again. To say that they _live_ is hopeful… or depressing, rather? It’s hard to decide…”

Either the Hunter was rambling or it was Gilbert who kept switching off mid-word and coming back two sentences later. He couldn't count this possibility out, because his every blink seemed to last longer than necessary.

“...she gave me a music box…”

“Mhm.”

He tried to engage, but his answers were scarce and his mind kept wandering. The odour Hunter gave off wasn’t as sour this time, it was lighter and more airy - like the atmosphere right after a lightning struck - though it also carried a note of burned paper. Quite pleasant, all in all.

“...this strange dream I keep having.”

For a moment Gilbert rose to the surface and turned his face to the window. “Dream?” His lungs felt empty.

“Of a place that’s not here. It’s quiet and peaceful. When I’m too exhausted or hurt to stay awake, this place gives me respite. I wake up restored and there’s new strength in my limbs.”

“I’m jealous.” Somewhere in the back of his head Gilbert was quite positive that he’d never say these words if the fever wasn’t muddling his thoughts. “And happy for you… that you have a refugee… no matter how brief.”

A thump sounded outside and the voice whispered even closer than before - did the Hunter stand on the fence to peek inside? What a cad.

“I don't know what’s real anymore. I can make bullets out of my own blood - I think it’s my blood. It’s silver and fills empty casings like lead, and they work as if nothing’s out of ordinary. I fought… on the bridge I fought a beast as big as this house and saw a fragile woman turn into a horned monster in the Grand Cathedral!” A shade of hysteria stole its way into the Hunter’s voice. “I keep… I think I keep dying, Gilbert. To get so hurt… I’m not immortal, I know that, it’s impossible, but it hurts so much… and then I walk it off…”

Oh god, has it started already? The madness, the hunters’ own kind of plague that the people talked about with fear in their eyes?

“You’re a Hunter,” Gilbert tried to calm the man as much as he could, using the tone that he remembered working on his students in the past. Gentle and reasonable, nothing to see here, move along. “Hunters are different from… common people.”

“All these ‘common people’ fear me now.” A pause and then: “Do you?”

“...me?” It took Gilbert a moment to catch up to the question.

“Do I scare you, Gilbert?”

Did he?

“...nothing scares me anymore…” Gilbert lied once again.

 

*****

 

The man always went away, the Hunt called to him as strongly as he seemed to fight it. Gilbert took these absences with a mix of relief and anxiety - he could breathe easier when there was only incense in the air, but if there was no one to distract him with conversation he was back to thinking about his situation. And, since his situation wasn’t changing for the better anytime soon, he was left with staring at the walls, counting threads in the scruffy cuffs of his robe and scratching the burn marks on his right palm as if they were still fresh...

That’s why every time the Hunter came back - _God only knew why_ , - was appreciated. And he kept coming back as the night grew darker.

( _“I think I’m seeing things in the shadows where there are none.”_ )

Every time he did, the smell was getting worse and so did the cough, but Gilbert didn't mention it.

( _“Have you heard of a place called Byrgenwerth?”_

 _“No, I can’t... say that I… have.”_ )

Because he was a coward and a pitiful wretch, and he wanted the company. He wanted to hear that low, raspy voice even if it was laced with misery as it told him about madness and horrors beyond human reasoning.

( _“They steal their eyes. Eyes!”_ )

He didn’t know how lonely he was before the stranger knocked on his window.

( _“...monsters rule Cathedral Ward. Chained giants and pale-faced spooks control the streets. How can these people live like that?”_ )

For that, he was willing to deal with the pain. He’s offered his ear to the stranger, it would be incredibly rude to deny even this little scrap of solace the Hunter seemed to find at his window.

( _“I hate these damn crows.”_ )

 

***** 

 

The melody was enchanting, though it was a sad one. It roused Gilbert from the stupor he fell into after his last attempt at finishing the book ended with the romance flying across the room. It crashed into the wall and fell behind the bed, out of sight, and Gilbert was happy; the writing was atrocious and the supposed ‘love scene’ was hilariously ill-researched… and why would he want to remind himself of all the things he could never have - on his deadbed, no less?

“Are you awake?”

Was the coughing not clear enough signal that he was?

Oh, the fever had to go down again, since sarcasm returned to his repertoire. But he still felt hot…

“...what is… that sound?” Gilbert asked, curious.

“This? A music box, from the little girl. She wanted me to give it to her mother when I find her.”

The Hunter was oddly calm.

“Did you… find her?”

The music ended with a decisive snap of the box closing and a single word that carried the weight of a tragedy. “I did.”

Gilbert fell silent. He wished he’d paid more attention to the ramblings of the Hunter before, and he wished that he knew what to say now to make it - whatever it was - better. Luckily, the matter was taken out of his trembling hands before he managed to make a fool out of himself.

“I met a man in the Cathedral Ward.” The Hunter said. “He is very friendly. His name is Alfred.”

 _That_ information roused Gilbert even further from the muddled state wrecking his body and mind.

Oh, he was a sad little man.

“Is he now…” Wooden tongue formed the words his typically English upbringing wanted to choke him with.

“Yes. Very cheerful and polite.” A hollow chuckle followed. “I know, a rarity in these parts, I should take care with him. But there are kind people in Yharnam, even if few and far between. One is dwelling in the Odeon’s chapel; though she is rather hideous looking... that will teach me to judge people by their appearance, I guess.”

“Hmm… is your Alfred any better?”

Oh God, that was pathetic! His chest was tight, but not because of the sickness and it disgusted him more than blood between his teeth.

The Hunter, for a change, gave a perfect impression of a cough, meaning to hide his embarrassment. “Hardly mine,” he muttered diplomatically. “But yes, he is, very much so. Taller than me by a head, I'm not used to that. Classical features and rather magnificent mutton chops, I have to admit. He’s also a Hunter himself, and a quite skilled one too.”

“That’s… _fortunate_.” Gilbert almost cut his tongue on that lie.

If the Hunter heard the hostility in his tone he didn’t react to it in any way; he remained calm and strangely removed. As if he didn’t have any more emotion to spare.

“This is one of the reasons I came,” he said. “Alfred offered to accompany me to Old Yharnam. It seems to hold some answers for my plight.”

“Old Yharnam?” Gilbert’s dislike for the new ‘friend’ was replaced by fear in an instant. “But it has been closed off… for years…”

“Yes. Yet I still need to go there and it may take me a while. I may not come back at all, that’s why I…”

Oh, that bastard!

“I will not send you off!” Gilbert snapped like an angry cat, heart thudding in his chest. “Not, when you’ll be back soon enough to bother me!”

What was wrong with him? He was suddenly angry and terrified, and it didn’t make any sense. The wish to stand up and shake the man through the window until his head screwed on straight blossomed in his chest, almost choking him.

“…do I bother you?” The Hunter asked and for the first time he sounded unsure.

“Beyond measure!” Gilbert felt light and heavy at the same time. Hot - his insides were burning, but his skin felt like ice, brittle and dead. What was happening to him? “I’m dying here and instead of… of letting me expire in peace, y-you keep making me worried!”

“I only thought to… lady doctor has changed her mind and the clinic may be a better place…”

“ _I told you that I can’t walk!”_ He felt like tearing something apart. Damn him for throwing the book away!

“You don’t have to. I can…”

“No, _you can’t!_ ” The humiliation it would bring him was simply too much. Especially that something in his head wanted to _let him_. “…here!”

Flame sprayer landed on the parapet with a clunk – the tank was half-full of oil and forcing it up there cost Gilbert all his remaining strength. He fell back against the backrest, gasping for air, with one hand barely holding the weapon on the narrow shelf.

Oh, how he hated it! How he hated his weak, broken body in that moment!

“I have little use for it… but where you’re going… if we don’t meet again… gods keep you…”

Old Yharnam wasn’t a place people came back from. It simply _wasn’t_.

“Gilbert…?” The Hunter whispered, doubtlessly shocked by this unbecoming display. He sounded smaller, suddenly, younger. Gilbert fought to dismiss this revelation with the last dregs of his dignity. “Please, don’t be angry with me.”

The flame sprayer was taken and he let his hand slip down the wall behind the curtain, before it could be seen in all of its pale, skeletal glory.

“…won’t you let me see you?”

“Why would I be angry?” He asked instead of answering.

The Hunter was going away to a place that was death and despair, from which he may not return, not unchanged at least. He was going away with a handsome, friendly hunter named Alfred and Gilbert was staying here, in his little dark prison, to die.

What was there to be angry about?

 

*****

 

He was in agony after that. Ravaged by the sickness and guilt, fighting for every breath he curled up in the armchair as small as his aching body allowed. At some point he stopped wiping the blood from his lips, what was the point? His sleeves were stained with it up to the elbows and he kept smearing it all over his face when he tried to wipe the tears from his eyes. Better to leave it, no matter how horrendous of a cadaver it’ll make him.

And the progression of his illness wouldn’t be that bad if not for the little voice in the back of his head that whispered to him how much of a wretch he is. How distasteful one has to be to spread his misery onto others, to let their pettiness slip the reins of decency and take it out on someone whose intentions were pure.

 _Our intentions weren’t even close to that_ , the voice said and Gilbert whimpered in grief and humiliation. It wasn’t true – couldn’t be. He was ill… It was just one evening! A few hours, no matter that they’ve felt like days. And the man was a Hunter, no less, and Gilbert was… Gilbert. A delusional, ill, miserable little man wavering on Death’s doorstep.

He had no right to claim that friendship, no right to claim the man’s attention for himself.

The Hunter was kind enough to entertain him and treat him like a human being, not a sad sack of bones he was seen as these last few weeks. He was doing Gilbert a courtesy by showing up at all - only to be disrespected with these… sick fantasies.

Exhausted, Gilbert fell into uneasy slumber. His dreams were strange and terrifying. The tales of the Hunter and those he’d heard during his two year stay in Yharnam merged together into one foul concoction and graced him with images of monsters tearing the city apart. Tales of the rabid dogs and barking crows intersected creating dog-headed birds that bared their teeth at him – his right hand burned with fire and he wished he could chop it off… If he could only chop it off in time!

But in the dream, as in the real life, there was no escape, his arm blossomed with sickly purple lesions, skin started to rot and by the time his bones showed Gilbert was ready to howl with pain and terror… and if not for the blood filling his throat, he would…

He yearned to die human, but Death was slow in coming.

 

****

 

Ironically, it was the sound of someone crying that woke him up this time. And since he could barely breathe, he knew that it’s not him. Like in a dream, he turned his head towards the window and tried for the words… And then tried again.

It took four tries before he gathered enough moisture in his mouth to speak.

“…what’s wrong?” He never expected a time would come when speaking would leave him exhausted. “…are you…hurt?”

A flurry of movement seemed to happen outside the window; clang of weapons, someone crashing into the bars, booted feet scraping the fence. Then a voice coming thickly out of a swollen throat called: “Gilbert!”

Ah, this gloriously familiar voice.

“You live!” The bars creaked under the strain of a body leaning on them. “You still live…”

“…yes, still…” His eyes felt glassy, but that was probably the dust.

The Hunter laughed weakly, like a man left breathless with relief. “I knocked on the window, but there was no answer and I feared… For a moment there I thought I’ve made you up…” The laugh peaked and died down, uneasy and vaguely unpleasant.

“…if so… you have poor imagination… my friend,” Gilbert joked. “I’d rather be… taller, if you please…”

“God, I like to hope that I’d make up an apparition with a better sense of humour!”

“I’d feel hurt…” If there was a part of his brain left to feel any new pain.

Oh gods, it was a relief to hear that voice, to know that his Hunter was whole and healthy, that he’s managed to leave Old Yharnam in one piece. He was so happy that Gilbert almost forgot that he can’t breathe.

This time the man’s smell was that of blood and… dirt? Rotting pine needles and… caustic water?

“…are you… unharmed?”

The choked sound could be taken for a sigh if it didn’t end with words.

“I... killed these children...”

The whole story came out of the man in between wet, gasping whispers and pained wails - a tragic tale of what met the Hunter known as Father Gascoigne and his family. Gilbert has heard about him, the Gascoigne was quite famous for his towering stature and immense strength. And to now know that even a man so powerful would succumb to bloodlust and commit a crime so heinous… To learn of the fate that met his children and the good doctor Iosefka at the hands of a heartless impostor... that broke his heart.

“All Hunters fall, don’t they?” The Hunter rasped at the end of his story. “All of us, no exceptions… We dream this nightmare until we turn into beasts and wreak destruction until the crowfeather woman catches up to us… Isn’t it so?”

How was he to know? He didn’t...

“You didn’t kill them…” Gilbert desperately wished to console the man, but only had strength for a few words left. “Not the wife… not the children…”

“I’ve sent the girls to the clinic!” A smack of a fist hitting the wall. “Hoping they would be safe, with a woman to take care of them… and instead, I gave them torture and death! If I had just waited… If I had taken them to the Chapel instead… _Damn it!”_ Another smack. “If I was more serious in my search of Gascoigne I might have saved their mother…” Another, and this time something broke off from the wall and crumbled to the ground. “If I’d only…”

“If you weren’t here… I’d be dying in despair…”

Gilbert almost missed the loudly drawn breath.

“Don’t,” the Hunter begged.

He deserved mercy – and so much more – but mercy often came in different forms.

“I’m not going to be… of use for much longer…” It was just ironic that the quickest one was the most painful. “But I’m content… Yharnam gave me time… its blood bought me two years… from an incurable affliction… and I can die human, too… I’ve… much to be thankful for… And our acquaintance… though short… brought me much… joy....”

“Don’t you start now! I will not send you off!” The Hunter growled his words back at him, just with more force and hopeless despair. “I can’t…”

“You don’t have to… stay… I have barely any strength left… for conversation...as it is...”

 _And I’d rather you left,_ he thought. His end was looking rather grim at the moment, few would like to be seen in such manner.

 _But_ , at the same time, _I’d rather you stayed and kept talking until I can’t hear you anymore._

“Apologies, dear friend,” the Hunter someway managed to pull himself together and Gilbert appreciated it. His mother’s good schooling didn’t mesh well with shouting matches. “I’ve been less than courteous to you from the moment we have met. Eh, my manners seem to begoing the same way my sanity does… Forgive me.”

“No, it’s not…”

“Maybe now, at least, will you let me shake your hand? If not to greet, then to...“

 _Farewell_.

“...alright.”

He reached up - or struggled to reach the parapet with his right hand. It was cleaner than his left, but stiff and barely responded to the commands from the mind; it took too long to navigate it through the curtains. The trick was to part them just enough so the limb could slip by without revealing anything else of his posture. He looked ill, gaunt and bloody, no point in showing his miserable state to the Hunter.

He flinched when the hand was touched by rough leather stained with something slick.

“Wait, this is not… eh, apologies.” The Hunter rambled and the touch disappeared. “Just a moment, please!” And then came back, but this time the skin was bare and smooth, but for callouses that all weapon masters acquired with time.

Strong fingers wrapped around Gilbert’s wrist. “You’re cold.” Warm palm covered his chilled digits. “Thin, too.”

Gilbert didn't know what to say when Hunter poked his nails and fingertips, inspecting them one by one. So far it’s been unlike any handshake that he had ever experienced.

“Ink stains,” the man mused. “You write?”

“...I used to,” Gilbert tried to keep his vice level, but it was an uphill march. “I’m a schol- _ah_ …” his voice cracked like a schoolboy’s. Unacceptable! “I-I used to teach…”

“Mhm.” The hand was turned slowly around and appraised from every angle.

He didn’t want it back. No one touched him this gently in months, maybe even in years. As if his protruding bones and blood smeared on them wasn’t disgusting, as if he was worth the appraisal. Fire under his ribs flared anew and this time it had nothing to do with the fever.

“So thin,” the Hunter mourned. “Is that why you won’t show me your face?”

“I’m… not much of a sight… at the moment.”.

Not like handsome Alfred, that’s for sure.

“Women like men with graceful hands, though.” A chuckle. “I bet that ladies turned their heads after you all the time.”

What?

Was it… Was _he_ …?

Gilbert swallowed with difficulty. Was he being gauged?

Did he really care?

“I wouldn't know…” He did. Quite a lot, actually. “I never paid them… much mind…”

And then a finger gently traced the inside of his wrist - the nail scraping the skin _just so_ – and he had to bite his other hand to stop a moan from escaping his dry throat. _Oh, God_ , that hand was half-numb, but Gilbert felt to his very toes when a fingertip stopped at the soft flesh of his palm!

“These are burn marks,” the man stated with concern and the euphoric feeling disappeared like a dream. “And bite… marks... _Oh_.”

Yes, oh. Saint Hubert’s key wasn't gentle. It left two last fingers on that hand half-paralysed and the ruin of his right thigh was better to go unmentioned. The pain of it still lived somewhere in the back of Gilbert’s mind; the fear he felt when they had tied him down and forced burning iron into the wounds was forever engraved into his psyche.

(“ _Barbaric practice,” Healing Church’s doctor shook his head in disgust at the scars; not so much at Gilberts suffering, but at the perceived insult to his profession._ “ _Do they always brand men like cattle in that London of yours when their science fails?”)_

“Told you… it’s incurable…”

He wanted to pull the hand away, but the grip was steady and the Hunter was not pushing him away in panic. More, the man touched his wrist again, once more gently tracing the veins.  

“I’m sorry,” was all he said.

Gilbert opened his mouth to try and pretend that it’s not that bad, not important, doesn’t mean much – when his brain finally registered the fleeting pain of a needle plunging into his wrist. And in Yharnam that would only mean one thing.

“What…” He pulled at the trapped arm, but he might have been a kitten trying to fight off a wolf for all he accomplished. “Wait… _no_ …!”

Blood entered his body and the potency of it almost knocked him unconscious. He gasped in shock; this was unlike any blood he’s taken so far. _Mrs.Winslow’s Soothing Syrup_ didn’t hit this fast and this hard!

“I’m sorry, my friend,” Gilbert heard through the ringing in his ears. “Ah, you will _despise_ me, I know, but I won’t have you die when I’m away. Arianna is a whore, but I trust her blood more than I will trust any cleric’s, it will sooth your pain if nothing else.”

He was drowning and then the needle retreated and he was flying.

“I wish you haven’t done that…” He said with no problem at all. It was nice, warm, like a freshly hatched sparrow.

“I know.” With a last gentle caress the Hunter let go of the captive limb and Gilbert pulled it in, folding it across his chest with a sort of mute wonder. He thought the man would keep it. “I wish it wasn’t necessary, but whenever I turn away people keep dying and I’m never there… always out of my sight… I can’t save anyone.” The bars rattled under a hit. “I’ll find that place they call Byrgenwerth and get the answers out of them! And then the Healing Church will pay… It will pay for Old Yharnam, for its people cursed to beasthood, for all the Hunters it has betrayed!”

He was getting louder, or maybe it was Gilbert that was getting smaller. He felt thin and transparent.

“And when I’m back I will…” The voice gentled, turned soft and grey, like dusk and feathers. “If I have to tear each of their cursed gods apart with my own bare hands, I will make it right! Just… just hold on, please, give me time… just a bit more time and I’ll make it _right_.”

“…good Hunter…”

“…don’t die. Please, don’t die... Wait for me.”

He was weightless, like a summer breeze.

“…I will.”

Somewhere in the distance, a child was crying.

 

****

 

The end was unexpected. Euphoria caused by the healing blood swelled and left him as rapidly as it came, and Gilbert crashed back into his broken body like a bird with an arrow in its chest crashes to the ground.

The pain was immense. All his bones turned to molten metal and tried to cook him from the inside. He trashed in the chair, trying to rip the stifling clothes away from his skin before realising with terror that his limbs are not moving as he wants them to. Like a doll with its joints removed at the shoulders and hips, he was trapped in an immobile vessel, barely able to cast his eyes about the room. Light that filtered in through the curtains was pale-orange… Morning? Was it morning already?

Screaming entered his perception when his body seized, spine arched off the backrest and Gilbert slipped to the floor, nearly braining himself on a corner of the bed. The upturned stool clipped him in the shoulder, both bowl and the cup went to pieces. What little water was left soaked his sleeve and Gilbert retched.

_Oh no. Gods no. No! He was not… he has been healed! The bite was scarred over and he wasn’t…_

But his body cringed at the sight of water, shook at the feeling of it, his throat kept swelling and was he a dog, he would be put down already!

_Gods why… He’s had blood! The Hunter gave him blood…!_

Laments and shrieks came now at him from all sides, people screaming for help, weeping for rescue, apologising to any deity that came to mind while he writhed on the floor in convulsions. Wet heat was running from his nose and ears, his eyes clouded with red and his thighs grew sticky… blood wanted to escape his body and bones pushed at the flesh form the inside, pulling him apart inch by inch…

Suddenly there was pop – a minuscule sound of flesh snapping – and Gilbert howled when the vision in his right eye flickered and simply… went away.

_Someone... it was morning! Why was this happening, the Hunt was over! **It was morning!!**_

Someone’s child was crying and its whimpers rose above all others, monotonous, gut-wrenching...

_Why… why him? It was…_

One of the spasms brought his head around with a sickly crack; pain blossomed it his temple and neck, but his remaining eye opened and from that angle he saw… blood covering the floor and painting the sheets on the bed, bubbling from his lips. Broken porcelain. His robe, the cuff shredded and sticking out of it was his right hand…

No, not his hand.

Curved claws and wet fur was the last thing Gilbert saw before his remaining pupil ruptured. Bloody bile pushed at his ribs and came up to his throat with a shriek of horror that turned into denial as skin split open along his spine and bones finally pushed through the joints, tearing their way out of his flesh.

_Why, gods, why…_

Half-insane from pain and terror of a body reforming around his drowning psyche, Gilbert realised that he wasn’t going to die human.

He wasn’t going to die at all.

 

 

 

 

*******

 

 

 

 

_Stay. Don’t go._

Hurts. Light hurts.

_Stay, wait._

Hurts, the air hurts…

_…he will come._

Fire hurts. Fire and the smell. Smell burns nose and lungs. Get away, go, leave…

_No. Wait. He will come._

The little glass bulb makes the smell, and make slight… destroy it… like the cage was destroyed…

_Leave it. He will return to it._

Burns! Hunger burns, too. Blood on the air and the sounds of dying everywhere… hurts… the child stopped crying and it’s scary now…

_Stay. He will come. He will help._

Hunters are close… hunters are death…

_Wait. He will come._

 

***

 

Clang. Shoes on the ladder. That accursed stench.

“Gilbert, I’m…” Silence. “No…oh, no _no no **no!** ”_

_He’s here._

Hunter. Blood and silver and death!

_He’s back._

“Gilbert, answer me! Please, not you too…!” Metal slamming into metal, sharp edges cutting through the bricks like they were made of bread. “ _Goddamnit!”_

Kill him. Kill him, spill his blood!

_He will help._

“Damn this place! Damn it to the bottom of Hell! …d-damn them all…”

Kill him before he goes crazy. Kill him before he turns around.

_He will help._

The Hunter’s easy pickings, hunched over the broken wreckage of the cage. Shouting. Kill him, he won’t hear. He won’t know.

“Good God… Gilbert? Is that…”

_He will…_

Hurts! Hurts, stop!

“I’m sorry…”

Silver hurts, stop!

_…he will help…_

“So very sorry…”

Bells chime in the distance. The child stopped crying. It wasn’t a morning light he saw, it was the moon.

“Forgive me, my friend…”

It was the Moon…

 

 

****

 

 

Gilbert woke up with a gasp, hands flying to his throat, expecting to find it torn open by a cruel blade. There was nothing; he could breathe and the skin was smooth under his trembling fingertips.

He cast a panicked glance around his tiny room and found nothing out of order.

A bowl of soup was at his bedside, flame sprayer by the window, romance novel peeked at him from the armchair.

He was sweaty and weak, and unshaven, and the window was closed, curtains open to the sun setting behind the spires of the Cathedral Ward.

…

And there was a stranger standing in the corner of his room. Not even six feet tall, but somehow stretching his presence from the floor to the ceiling and beyond the walls. A Hunter dressed in all black - not a Church’s garb, though, - with his face hidden behind a metal mask; unmoving and unobtrusive like a shadow.

Gilbert drew himself back, pulled the blanket closer to his chest and squeezed his eyes shut.

“Did I die?” He asked, shivering like a leaf on the wind.

“You dreamed,” answered the Hunter. “It was all a bad dream.”

Gilbert felt that raspy voice echoing in his bones like the screams of the damned and dared to doubt it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just to explain - Gilbert's 'affliction' was Hydrophobia - otherwise known as rabies. Deathly and incurable. And St Hubert's Key was a real thing.  
> Just to make it even more tragic>_>


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait, I had to cover a lot of ground with this one>>  
> Also, I happened to connect the end to "Breathe for Me";] Given time, I will get one more single story of that verse posted - what really happened to Gilbert in the shiny, new Yharnam when Alfred was dealing with his own beast?

The sun came up yellow – what a difference clear sky made. Without thousands of fireplaces and chimneys spitting up smoke and soot day and night, polluting the air to the point where one could forget that the clouds are actually white.  Living first in London, then in Yharnam, - both cities tightly packed with people, stinking up to high heavens, - Gilbert was unused to clear air that smelled of dew-covered grass and blooming apple trees.

( _The orchard appeared on the third day of his stay at the Workshop. A new path led around the back of the building, slipped down the hill on a few stone-hewn steps to end at the first row of gnarled trunks._

_“I dreamed of apple trees once,” the Hunter whispered to him when Gilbert tried to wrap his mind around the new addition. The man sounded embarrassed, speaking haltingly behind his back, and Gilbert could imagine him helplessly clenching his hands like one of his students back in the day. “I might have overdone it a bit.”_

_Gilbert chuckled. “You think?” Tall and thick, the orchard stretched all the way to the horizon in even rows, dusted white with petals drifting on the wind. “But I like apples,” he hurried to assure. The Hunter has lost the memory of who he was before coming to Yharnam, everything that might serve him instead was grasped and held tightly, and Gilbert was far from wanting to take that away. “It’s alright.”_

_“Are you sure?”_

_Gilbert nodded, knowing somewhere in the back of his head that the existence of the orchard and all it represented to the man depended solely on his say so.  Which should be ridiculous, but…_ _When he questioned the presence of the gravestones in front of the Workshop they’ve disappeared during the night never to appear again._ )

He tried not to think too hard on the specifics of reality he was a part of these days. At least not yet.

He also didn’t try to think too hard on the existence of the Doll. She wasn’t that bad, all in all, though her presence had a tendency to be disquieting – her sheer size, expressionless face and the sound her joints made when she moved.

The fact that she moved on her own was delegated to the far corner of Gilbert’s mind to wait for a time when he won’t feel like considering it will drive him insane.

( _“She will let you be as long as you don’t need her,” the Hunter told him after his first bout of hysteria. “Don’t be afraid, friend. If she disturbs you this much I can put her to sleep, but not yet. I’d hate to leave you without any company at all.”_

_“You’re here,” Gilbert protested, trying not to imagine a life where his only company would be a living doll._

_“Yes, I am,” the Hunter agreed. “But what company I can be to you?”_

_What company indeed? Gilbert wasn’t stupid, having a voice whisper to him from behind his back without ever seeing its owner would drive anyone mad sooner or later. Still… a madness you knew…_

_“You can let me see you,” he insisted._

_And the answer to that, as always, was sharp and unrelenting. “I cannot.”)_

That's how this conversation always ended, no matter how strongly Gilbert insisted and how desperate he was to see his companion face to face.

Oh, how the roles have reversed! Not long ago it was him that hid from the man, ashamed of his broken state, afraid that if he’s seen, the easy companionship will end.

And now, when his body was returned to full health and didn’t look like a pile of bones dressed up in a ragged curtain of sallow skin…

_(“Is it good?” The Hunter asked._

_Gilbert stood stock still in front of a bath full of hot water that appeared in a small alcove behind his bed right after he mused that he’d like to get clean. Naked, with water dripping down his arms and chest, he tried not to cry._

_There was no trace of the scars on his thigh. Where the flesh was torn and disfigured - smooth, even skin now stretched. His hand was unmarred too. As if it never…_

_“How is it?” The Hunter asked again._

_“How is what?” Gilbert echoed, struck dumb._

_A leather-clad hand rested on his shoulder, another on his hip; they were cold, but before he shivered they weren’t anymore._

_“This body. Is it how you wished it? Does it work like you wanted?”_

_The implications of that flew over his head back then, the horror and madness hidden underneath innocent, one would think, questions. He was still overcome with a novelty of unhindered breathing and movement. He didn’t pay attention to the way the Hunter acted like a child looking for praise for its efforts._

_“It works,” he answered, then, joy encasing is words in warmth. “It works as it should.”_

_Fingers on his hip tightened and Gilbert felt a forehead resting next to those gripping his shoulder. Cold point of a nose poked his skin, hair brushed his nape. “That’s good,” the Hunter breathed. “At least this… good.”_ )

Now he was the one that wasn’t allowed to see the face of his saviour.

Saviour… A loaded word Gilbert used only once, on his first day at the Workshop, when the joy of being not dead made everything seem bright and uncomplicated.

 _(“Do not!” The snarl carried under the Workshop’s ceiling and the walls shook as it echoed and multiplied, making the windows rattle and giving Gilbert his first taste of unease. “Do not...” A low voice separated from the echo and curled around his head. Hands grasped his shoulders when he tried to turn around. “I’m no one’s saviour.  Would I need to do this now if I’d saved you? I wasn’t_ _there… when you suffered, when they were dying…  I have killed so many with my own hands… I have called you a friend and then brought on your end…”_

_“No.” His memories of the past were muddled, some of them he kept pushing away on purpose, because they were too grotesque.  But he remembered the worst of it. “My end came out of the plague.  It was a curse that destroyed Yharnam, you hardly could foresee…”_

_“It was I who cursed that city.”_

_The whispers layered and repeated to the point where Gilbert had to cover his ears to escape the incessant buzzing grating across his nerves like splintered wood. It didn’t help much._

_“When I killed Rom, gods descended on Yharnam,” the Hunter said. “They tore that dream apart and devoured everyone within it. And I did nothing… as I was then, I could do nothing…”_

_“What are you… gods?” Gilbert tried to make sense of the rambling, but it escaped him. “Who was Rom…? I don’t understand!”_

_“Good. If you did, then this place would serve no purpose.”_

_“Will you let go!” He snapped finally, annoyed that all his attempts to turn and confront the man were thwarted. “I’m not talking to thin air, for godssake! If we’re going to discuss things it will be face to face!”_

_The hold on his arms tightened and all the echoes ceased. “We’re not going to discuss this,” the Hunter said, steel ringing in his voice, harsh with him for the first time. “This is the only thing I will hold you up to, for your sake more than mine; I will not talk of certain things and you will not see my face.”_

_“Why?”_

_“I’m not much of a sight at the moment.”)_

The Hunter, as Gilbert was made aware on a few separate occasions, liked to throw his words back at him. He wasn’t vicious about it, but made his point strongly regardless.

Why was it, that with this man it was Gilbert who felt like a schoolboy not the other way around?

Oh god, he missed teaching. He missed being the one who had the answers and readily imparted his knowledge to eager pupils. The Hunter would make a poor professor.

It took a while, but one could get used to everything. The Workshop was empty, but still a better place than the one he occupied before – a tiny, lonely room In Yharnam that he was going to die in. It was quite homely, even - with the carpets, big windows and bookcases full dusty tomes.

_(“How to woo fair maidens.” Gilbert read the title out loud, trying to keep from chuckling, as he leafed through the book. “Really? That’s… quite an, eh…” He wasn’t strong enough, the chuckles won. “…really?”_

_“You probably won’t believe it, but these books don’t belong to me,” the Hunter answered with equal mirth. “They belonged to the previous… occupant of this Workshop.”_

_“Oh?” That piqued Gilbert’s interest. Although, to be honest, he was in a Hunters’ nest so everything piqued his interest. “Unlucky chap, I take it?”_

_“Yes, quite. But now they‘re yours, if you want them, as are all the things in here.”_

_There were many books, filling the cabinets and piling in front of them, it was going to take a while to go through them and Gilbert’s inner scholar rejoiced. Yharnam, for all its rich splendour, was hardly an intellectual city, with a few bookstores that offered anything past stories of fictional fancy. In one of them he has been told outright that if he wants to read about local flora, he better conducts research himself – which was followed by an advice to not bother with any foolishness while the Church watched._

_“Thank you. Ah, and what is this beauty?” That was when he walked up to a doll sitting on a chair by the window._

_That was also when she moved her head to look at him and he shrieked in fright like a little girl.)_

All in all, the day was looking nice to start with.

Gilbert woke up in a comfortable bed in which he could stretch his limbs with no fear of bruising them. The furniture in the Workshop was undergoing a slow transformation – tools littering the place started to disappear, greasy stains around workstations evaporated one after one. The alcove where Gilbert had his bed widened with time to accommodate another bookcase and a wardrobe, and the main room gained…

A woman.

“So,” she said, looking at him with sharp hazel eyes set in a dark, creased face. “Yer the one he kept prattlin’ ‘bout.”  

 

***

 

 _“She’s old and prickly like a patch of brambles.”_  The Hunter had said to him in the past and Gilbert now fully understood the sentiment.

The woman – and she had to be the one, the old Hunter he’s been told about, - was uncompromising. She was easily as tall as him, wider in the shoulders – which wasn’t any sort of accomplishment, Gilbert was always thin like a rail – and hard in a way that an age-old oak tree is hard. She had a presence of someone much bigger and a poise to match.

Crowfeather – the Hunter had called her once in his ramblings, and that also matched. Sher eyes were bright and striking, pupils pinprick-small and unmoving when she directed her regard at something. As if that wasn’t good enough, her overcoat was adorned with handfuls upon handfuls of black feathers, each reflecting light like a beetle’s back. Underneath it she wore something of a uniform, though the cut of it seemed foreign.

“Quit starin’ at me, boy!” She snapped and took a seat on a chair by the window, measuring the Workshop with a contemplative look. “Ah, this won’ do. Havn’t seen the place ‘n ages and it won’ do.”

Gilbert struggled to understand her through the thick accent he could not place. Suffolk? No. Norfolk neither… Not Yharnam, that’s for sure.

“What won’t do?” He asked, giving up.  

“This!” The woman swept her arm around, encompassing the entirety of the Workshop in that gesture. “If ‘ey’r to come, the ‘shop won’t fit ‘em all. We need ‘t make adjustments.”

Out of all the words she had mangled, the last one was perfectly pronounced.

“Adjustments?”

Gilbert tried to catch up with the plan that was obviously being conceived in front of him, but, to his defence, it was early and he didn’t have breakfast yet.

As if on cue, the woman looked past his shoulder and, following her look, he’s found that the workstation in the far end of the chapel was set with all kinds of foodstuffs.

“Not bad,” the woman whistled through her teeth. “That din’t happen when I was huntin’ for the Moon. Ah well,” she stood. “Come, boy, let’s eat an’ plan.”

“Plan?”

“Aye, we need more of ‘em rooms. An’ a prop’r bath fer t’ children.”

Gilbert stared after her, hoping he understood right. “Children?”

 

***

 

“So, eh, Miss…”

“Eileen will do, lad, I’m no Miss.”

“Eileen, then. My name is…”

“I know yer name.”

“Eh?”

 

***

 

“Does ‘e talk to ya in this place?” Eileen asked over a dainty cup of tea. She drank it black and even scoffed at Gilbert when he offered her a sugar bowl. “That yung sod that can’t keep ‘is nose outta others’ business?”

His own beverage was unapologetically sweet and milky, and he drank it with no shame. “The Hunter?”

“Aye, the twit,” she agreed easily, but without the bite in her tone. The insult sounded rather – fond. She drank her tar with her pinkie up; like the Queen herself. “Does ‘e keep ye company or leaves ye to stare at them walls all day?”

“Well,” Gilbert felt mildly offended at the insinuation that left to his own devices he was as good as a housepet. “He does. All the time. And even if he’s not here, there’s always Elise.”

Eileen narrowed her eyes at him and tilted her head to the side, for all intents and purposes looking like an offended corvid. “Elise? Who’s that?”

Gilbert blushed under her scrutiny. “Eh… the doll?”

He didn’t expect the fountain of tea that almost hit him in the face. Nor did he expect the raucous laughter that followed like a flock of arguing jackdaws.

“Gods!” The woman gasped, slapping the tabletop out of mirth. “Ye’ve named his Doll!”

“I don’t see what’s so funny about it! She can’t be just a ‘doll’ forever!”

“Aye gods!” A crow’s eye looked at him like he was a dumb child and some unearthed treasure at the same time. “No wonder ‘e praises ye so.”

 

***

 

The Workshop barely resembled itself by the time Eileen has finally decided it’s ‘good enough’. The building grew three times its original size, gained doors and windows, and dozens of little things Gilbert would never think of supplying on his own – linens, cutlery, spare plates and cushions, tea boxes and cooking utensils, liquid soap and a mangle! – all the things a single man of his profession would dismiss as unnecessary. And all that while, from the outside, nothing has visibly changed.

He walked through the Workshop in perpetual wonder, his brain trying to figure out which question to ask first while his common sense tried to silence him before he even started. The possibility of everything that has happened from the moment he woke up from the nightmare and the Hunter was in his room…

_(“Come with me,” The Hunter said, reaching out to him._

_Gilbert hunched in in himself. He wanted to go – he wished for nothing more than to be rid of Yharnam and its cursed fate, - but the nightmare still flashed in front of his eyes every time he dared to lower his lids._

_“I can’t… walk,” he stammered, sure down to his soul that he’s seen his future and it was bleak. “I’ll turn into a monster… I can’t…” He wanted to beg the man to kill him. He wanted to be saved._

_He only whimpered like a struck dog, curling up even more._

_“I can take you out of this dream and leave Yharnam’s curse behind,” the Hunter said quietly. “You can go with me and never fear the blood again.”_

_Scars on his hand beckoned sight, upraised and dark._

_“I’ll die anyway,” he whispered, miserable. “I’ll die of my own curse…”_

_“No.”_

_A hand grasped his, gently, kindly. Reverent. As if that thin limb wasn’t stamped with a death sentence._

_“You won’t die, my friend,” the Hunter said and Gilbert felt he’s being stared at, even from behind the steel mask. “I will make everything right.”)_

…to the now – where he stood in a reality apparently built out of someone’s wish was close to zero. It was madness.

But Eileen was familiar with this place, she knew of the doll, so, if that was the case, he wasn’t the only one who was mad.

“It was a Hunter’s Dream,” she said when he asked. “A place away from the Nightmare of Yharnam; here the Hunters took refuge when their wounds and exhaustion grew too much to bear.”

“Dream?” Yes, that was an apt description of the city. “I’ve heard him use this word. We’re not talking about… we’re not asleep, are we?”

She looked at him, then, in some sort of low contemplation, her eyes sharp in the face that bore marks of age like badges of honour. Indeed, to join the Hunt at this age…

“You know nothing of what transpired, then,” she stated with certainty. The longer they’ve interacted, the lighter her accent was becoming. “He didn’t tell you what he’s done, did’e?”

Gilbert straightened his back, as if scorned. She didn’t sound judgemental, simply observing the fact – but it was the fact that stung his pride. To be kept like a child in the dark, blind to some great truth that apparently everyone else knew about.

But before he’s managed to voice his opinion of that, the woman barked out the jackdaw laughter and patted his shoulder. Her fingers were hard and the blow strong enough that she almost sent him stumbling.

“I get it now,” she said, accent thickening. “Aye, he’s made a good choice with ye. At least one of ye deserved to sleep undisturbed.”

 

***

 

The children appeared out of nowhere one day. Just walked into the Workshop with the first rays of the sun, startling Gilbert almost out of his skin. Two little angels with flaxen hair and blue eyes. They ran to Eileen who welcomed them into her open arms. Auntie - they’ve called her.

Gilbert asked the Hunter what was this about, but he didn't get an answer.

The old woman came two days later. A truly hideous and unfortunate being, but she was also so impossibly kind. Elise - the Doll - took care of her like a truly doting nurse, and it was scary and touching at the same time. Who would have thought that even something that didn’t have life in it, could be kind?

“She’s not lifeless,” the Hunter said.

Gilbert was getting quite good at not jumping at voices suddenly speaking out behind his back.

He was sitting in the garden, a notebook open on his knees, sketching a curious little white flower he thought first to be a primose, but that upon closer inspection, turned out to be something else. The day was nice, the sky clear, small white clouds slowly travelled overhead.

“Is she not made of wood?” Gilbert asked, half-curious.

“She is.”

He could _feel_ the presence behind his back hovering, he could feel his hurried sketches being scrutinised. He tried not to notice that even though he was sitting with his back to the sun, the only shadow he could see on the grass was his own.  But if he turned his head a bit - if he was fast enough...

A hand fisted in his hair before Gilbert finished the thought.

“Don’t” said the Hunter. His voice was gentle, as was the touch - more a caress than anything else - but it was enough. “At least you don't cause me trouble.”

Gilbert sighed and decided that it’s not worth it. “Alright. So, who is causing you trouble? The girls are very well behaved.”

Indeed they were. Both little Lottie and her older sister Laura were entirely sweet and every time a memory of their tragic end resurfaced, Gilbert couldn't push it away fast enough.

“They are, but Eileen is hardly an angel,” the Hunter huffed and they both chuckled at that. “Neither is their father…”

Gilbert’s heart stuttered momentarily, but just then the Hunter released his head and he could feel a weight settling against his back.

“Is their mother..?” He chanced a question and dreaded to hear that cursed melody from the music box. It still plagued his dreams.

“She will come,” the Hunter said. “They both will, but… I have a rather big undertaking in mind and there's, _heh_ , opposition.”

Gilbert relaxed his fingers on the pencil in his hand before it broke. It was a good pencil, after all, it would be a shame to waste it on helpless anger.

“You’re not going to tell me more than that, are you?” He asked.

Silence.

“You used to…” It was a hard idea to consider; the thought that he was not enough. That back then in his nightmare he was just a conveniently stationary pair of ears for the Hunter, just means to unburden his spirit. After all, he was barely lucid for a large part of their ‘conversations’. Could he really lay blame on anyone there? Not really, and yet… “Ah, forget I said anything, I’m distracted…”

The weight against his back shifted, though, and he felt coarse hair tickling his nape; leather-clad fingers grasped his elbow. “Don't torture me,” the voice that reached him was strained and started to layer in on itself again. “At least not you! Do you think that I don’t wish to share it? That this burden is easy to carry alone?”

“Then share with me! I will listen.”

“This is nothing that you want to have a part of.”

Frustration gripped him and Gilbert almost turned around - almost raised his voice. “How can you know that?”

“Because I, too, thought that I’m strong enough for this knowledge,” the Hunter whispered. “I’ve chased after the answers to my questions thinking they will solve everything! In the end it all amounted to… Gilbert, I do not want you to be like I am.”

“And...” Why were his words coming out so choked? The sky turned overcast and he tried to ignore the obviousness of it. “And how... are you?”

A head rested on his shoulder, he could feel the outline of the metal face plate though his shirt and vest. “Tired,” the Hunter said. “Lonely. Afraid.”

It started to rain - just a soft, warm summer drizzle. Gilbert closed the notebook and didn’t move from the spot until the rain ceased and the weight against his back disappeared.

 

***

 

Agatha was a good woman. Tough many people crippled in such ways as her would grow bitter and spiteful towards the world - quite understandingly so - she was never anything, but glad to be alive and kind to anyone who approached her. She even treated Elise like she was a living being and shared long conversations with her, all sounding poignant and deeply philosophical. After some initial fright the girls warmed up to her and even Eileen didn’t sneer openly at being treated with the sort of quiet reverence Agatha seemed to have for everyone that wanted to talk to her.

“I asked him, but didn't think… Who am I, a poor wretch, to ask for such boons?” She whispered to Gilbert on one occasion, voice trembling with emotion, sightless eyes wet with joyful tears. “But he remembered and kept his word, he came back for me! In the darkest hour, he did… Only because I asked him.”

“What did you ask for?” He asked gently.

“Ah, for him to be my… I asked him if we can remain friends after the Hunt is over. Ah, friends! I’ve never had these!”

A friend.

She was so overjoyed with this simple notion that Gilbert felt like a beast when he felt a pang of pain in his chest. What a pitiful life she had to have, he wondered, that this small refugee made out of an old workshop seemed like heaven to her and people who barely didn’t scoff at her were worthy of the most genuine devotion.

He’d blame it on Yharnam’s population if he only wasn’t aware that spiteful and cruel people weren’t a localised problem. Things were no better in London, or Geneva where he studied. Things were the same everywhere.

“I’m slowly fixing that,” the Hunter said. “But it will take a while.”

“What, the world's injustice?” Gilbert asked, amused by the sole idea. “Good luck then, it may take only a couple hundreds of years.”

The Hunter chuckled. “That’s why I have to work on a smaller scale. Indeed, a small scale is all that the world is able to withstand from me.”

Gilbert woke up each day expecting to see a new guest in that strange dream, but for a while there was just the five of them. The girls, the crow, the old woman and the doll - one would feel a bit overwhelmed with the amount of women surrounding them, but Gilbert didn't have time for that yet. He revealed in the quiet domesticity of this life, in the ease of it. Only sometimes he wished for a male companionship - just someone to talk to or smoke a pipe with, now that he could smoke.

And soon enough, a man appeared in the Workshop, handsome and big, with tousled blond hair and the most magnificent sideburns. One day Gilbert stepped outside for a bit of fresh air and there he was, sleeping under a tree, amongst the white flowers, like some sort of a charmed prince.

For a moment Gilbert’s heart stuttered, because maybe finally, maybe! He walked up to the man, slowly, because even if he’s not… a male company would be welcome.

But then his eyes stopped at the ashen robe and he recognised the mark of the Church on it, and froze in place. Just when the man opened his eyes and looked at him.

They stared at one another for an uncomfortably long time - the man with curiosity, Gilbert with trepidation tying his stomach into knots.  In the end the man sat up and patted a patch of fresh grass by his side. It seemed that the proper English courtesies had no place here.

Gilbert took a seat, wary, trying to appear less out of his depth than he felt. The stranger - or maybe not, because he could guess who this was if he was only honest with himself -  looked at him; his eyes were pale green and strangely flat when set against the pleasant smile on his lips.  

“You’re the Gilbert, then,” the man said out of nowhere and Gilbert twitched.

“The Gilbert?” He echoed back.

The man shrugged, “He talked about you. Do you feel better now?”

“...much.” The Hunter talked about him? “Thank you. It’s Alfred, right? I’m pleased to finally make your acquaintance.”

Alfred shook Gilbert’s hand and, goodness gracious, it almost disappeared inside the rough gloved grip! One squeeze it would take to break the bones and both of them seemed to realise that at the same moment - they shared a glance and both pulled back, as if scalded.

“He spoke about you, too,” Gilbert offered.

He tried to sound not unhappy about it.

“I’d like to hope the it were all good things, but we both should know better.”  Alfred said with a little careless shrug and another blinding smile that was again not reflected by his eyes. “In the light of that, the pleasure is all mine, good sir.”

He was a smooth talker, this one. Gilbert felt self-conscious by just sitting next to him, painfully average in every inch of his rather unimpressive person, and ashamed of his thoughts. His personal hangups did not speak of this man’s worth and should not influence his opinion of him. The Hunter considered Alfred to be a friend, valued that friendship enough to save him from the horrors of Yharnam, so who was Gilbert to question his motives?

It were these shameful urges of his, rearing their heads from the pit he tried to bury them in for years now. He should know better - be better. Especially since the man was nothing, but amiable so far.

They sat in silence after that, made more awkward by the minute until Gilbert couldn't stand it anymore. If he had a chance to sate his curiosity, he will take it! “Did you ever see his face?”

Alfred hummed in thought and nodded, leaning against the tree. “Many times.” There was no judgement in his voice, just understanding.

“How did he look?”

“He…” A pause. Pale eyebrows narrowed and the Church hunter looked to the side; he took a deep breath and released it as an embarrassed chuckle. “I’d love to tell you, but I seem to have forgotten.”

A warm breath of the wind rustled in the leaves above them and Gilbert fought with the urge to scream. His mother raised him too well to give in to frustration, so he only sighed and rose to his feet.

“Come then,” he said. “Let’s introduce you to everyone.”

Alfred shook his head. “If you don't mind, I’d like to stay here for a while longer. This place is… very soothing.”

Awkward again, Gilbert mumbled an agreement and left.

 

***

 

Alfred didn’t enter the Workshop that day, nor the day after, opting instead to stay in the garden.

Reactions to his presence were varied. Eileen scoffed and threw him a dirty look to which the man answered with one of his unbreakable smiles - which seemed to annoy the woman even more. Gilbert had a strange feeling that they might have known one another in the past life.

The girls took one look at the ashen garb and the ornate shawl, gasped and ran away to hide. From that point on they were sulking around the Workshop, avoiding the ‘Churchman’ as if he carried a deadly plague. Again, it was met with a patient smile and no grief.

Alfred was generally an unobtrusive presence - if one was to ignore his sheer size, of course. He mostly slept amongst the flowers, prayed under the tree and sometimes conversed with the sky in hushed tones. On a few occasions he came closer to talk with Gilbert about small, unimportant things or, on the contrary, to spin some fabled designs that the man found too complicated to grasp. But he was always unflinchingly polite and good-humoured, and it became clear why the Hunter liked him. It was easy to speak to him, even if his congenial attitude from time to time felt somewhat unsettling in its persistence.

But then the bad days came. Alfred started to argue with himself, his voice turned vicious and raspy, his fingers pulled at his hair as if he wanted to tear them out by the handful. He walked up and down the meadow, agitated and loud. He stopped accepting meals - what did he eat? Did he eat at all? Gilbert didn't dare to ask.

They stopped going out and covered their ears when the screams became loud enough to breach the walls of their sanctuary. Eileen took it upon herself to patrol the premises, armed with these two long knives at her hip. She didn’t scorn Gilbert for his cowardice, even if he felt ashamed to his very bones.

He still remembered dying on a blade of a sword and something in his chest tightened painfully every time he heard these raspy screams calling on some gods he didn’t have any knowledge of. He still dreamed of the taste of blood on his tongue and in these dreams the yearning for it was alive and terrifying.

Then, one day the screams rose in volume and were joined by a clash of steel against steel, and Gilbert could not leave it alone. The girls were crowding to Agatha and even Elise, though seemingly confused by their reactions, joined them.

When he got to the orchard, the fight was already over. Eileen stood tall and still over the man, both knives at the ready. Her breathing was steady and her eyes were pitiless - once more she resembled a crow, patient and heartess as something died at its feet.

Alfred was curled on the ground, arms around his stomach and chest, he was moaning in some great pain. Gilbert went to him, but he was stopped by a hard grip on his arm.

“Leave him,” Eileen snapped.

“He needs help, for Godssake!” He snapped back. “You can't just…”

“He has to decide on his own,” her eyes reached his very soul with a piercing stare. “No one can help him.”

“Decide what?!”

“To die with the old gods or live with the new one.”

Gilbert flinched and stepped back. The talk about the gods again, first the Hunter, then Alfred, now her. “What is with all of you? Gods do not exist!”

She looked at him like he was daft and Gilbert wanted to curse, but then Alfred lurched in some painful spasm and spat out a mouthful of blood.

Gilbert’s spine stiffened, like he was doused with freezing water. The sight, the smell… the memory rose in his mind, phantom pain blossomed under his ribs and he had to press both hands to his mouth and nose to stop himself from vomiting. It hurt, god, it hurt…

“Go to the Workshop,” the Hunter appeared, as always out of sight.

“You can't order me around, boy!” Eileen argued good-naturedly. “I’m older than you’ve ever been!”

“I know, my crow,” he sounded fond. “I know. But go now while I deal with this.”

“No, I…” Gilbert choked out, unsure, but desperate. “I want to…” Help. Make it easier for the poor Church bastard, as the only person in this place who knew how it goes… who _knew_.

A hand landed on the small of his back, though, warm and unrelenting. It pushed him forward, he made a step and the doors of the Workshop were closing behind him. Eileen stood by his side, no less distraught by the sudden shift in perspective and no less put out by the cheap trick. She opened her lips to deliver, doubtlessly, some scathing remark, but didn't make it before the screaming started.

And it didn’t stop well into the night.

 

***

 

Alfred came back on the next morning. He knocked on the door politely and let himself in with no fuss. Out of his Church garb he looked even younger and more handsome, the plain shirt and ashen waistcoat accented his figure magnificently.

Or maybe it was the weight that was so obviously lifted from his shoulders that made him look more radiant than before.  

Gilbert tried not to hate him.

“Did you come to the consensus?” Eileen was the first one to speak. She sipped at her aromatic tar and bit into the scone with jam. The girls followed her example and did their best to look unbothered by the man’s presence.

“Yes,” the former Executioner smiled brightly, inviting himself to the breakfast table. “I am free of doubt.” He poured himself a cup of tea before turning to Gilbert and asking him with all seriousness, “Can I stay here now?”

Gilbert, struck dumb, dropped his own scone. Were his hands shaking? The power of this man’s regard was concerning. “Why are you asking me?” He mumbled. “This isn’t my decision to make.”

Alfred smiled at him in an indulgent way and Eileen started to laugh outright. Gilbert, feeling his ears reddening, wiped his lips on a napkin, thanked for the meal and, mumbling some sort of excuse, left the table. Then the Workshop.

He needed to be alone now. He needed… he heeded to think.

The meadow was bathed in the warm rays of the summer morning, flowers bloomed with force and the bees were already busy gathering nectar. Maybe they should ask for a beehive? The girls would surely appreciate fresh honey and maybe it would be enough to stop them from eating dry toast. It would be something to do, at least, a simple work he understood.

His feet carried him through the meadow and into the orchard, where leaves glistened with dew and new fruit started to turn rosy. It was a charming place, the sky was so impossibly blue and the wind was gentle. As if the world around him tried to calm his nerves down with all its might and Gilbert felt like a beast, because he wasn’t letting it.

His heart pounded and his stomach felt queasy, his head kept swimming. It felt like an oncoming fever, but his skin was cool and nothing signaled an illness before breakfast. It felt like there was a living being trapped under his ribs, trying to get out, that he kept pushing down with the power of his will. He folded his trembling arms across his chest and clenched them down hard until his shoulders started to tremble from strain. He felt nauseous. He felt ill. The sun was suddenly too bright, so he stepped between the trees in search of some soothing shade, in search of a place that would hide him from sight.

It was so strange and awful, he never felt like that - well, he did, sometimes, when he was about to speak before some distinguished audience, or try to explain to some elderly relative why he isn't married yet… but not at his own breakfast table and not because he met a man who… who…

 _Friends_.

They were his friends, weren’t they? That was the reason the Hunter brought them all here, into this place. They were all…

And he was a beast. Nothing else than a filthy, unnatural beast of a man filled with sick yearnings and no shame at all!

Gilbert didn’t know how far had his mad stumble taken him from the Workshop, and he could carry on even further away if the earth under his feet didn't suddenly split into an open chasm. He was only saved from falling in by a pair of hands that grasped him around the waist and pulled him back at the last moment.

“Careful there,” a sunny voice advised over his head. “You wouldn’t want to fall into that, now.”

Shaken by the near miss, Gilbert peered into the pit - only to recoil from the sight and tear himself from the accidental embrace in a mad scramble to get away from the…The hole was ten yards in diameter at most, and some twenty deep by the looks of it - well, probably, it was hard to see the bottom. It was filled with snakes! Or, _almost_ snakes. More like maggots grown to the size of vipers, that writhed and slithered over each other in their confinement, hissing and spitting like a tangle of rattlesnakes.

“What is this?” He choked out.

Alfred looked at him and shrugged carelessly. “Doubt,” he said. “I had a lot of it in me.”

White maggots churned under their feet and Gilbert wanted to vomit. “It… the screams…” he tried to string some words together, but it seemed impossible. “Oh god, the screams, you were…”

“He had to remove it by hand, I’m afraid.” Another sunny smile. “But I’m all better now, relieved of that dreadful choice. You don't have to look at me like that.”

Like what? Like he was insane? Like one of his eyes was…

“Your left eye is brown,” Gilbert whispered, stepping away from the man. “It wasn’t brown yesterday…”

Alfred frowned and touched his eyelid, as if he could ascertain the colour this way. “Ah, a bit of a blunder, I guess, I’ve been remade and you can't really expect him to get it right every time.” A searching look was sent his way. “Is it the reason you left the table? I didn’t intend to scare you away and came to apologise. I know that my presence may be hard to accept, considering my previous, eh, affiliation, but I can promise you that I am no danger to you or anyone else…”

Gilbert stared at the man, feeling helpless and old. “Remade?” He whispered. Step after step he was distancing himself from the snake pit and Alfred kept following him at a steady pace, so that they remained in easy reach no matter what. The man was tall and broad, and dangerous. “What are you talking about? What are you all talking about?!”

“We were all remade upon coming here,” Alfred explained calmly. “Our dream was destroyed, we were made anew.”

_“How is it?” The Hunter asked. “The body?”_

Gilbert touched his lips, his face, he tightened his fingers on his hair. His unblemished hand started to itch…  How? This was insane. He was no different than he used to be, right?

Alfred frowned seeing his reaction; they stopped and he came close, looming over Gilbert like a giant. “Have you really no idea what transpired in Yharnam?”

“No, I do not!” Gilbert spat like an angry cat, trying to stare the man down, because this was ridiculous! All of it! “And I do not appreciate having it pointed out to me time after time! You can enlighten me, not treat me like a…”

Alfred’s entire demeanor changed in a blink of an eye.

Gilbert swallowed his words and would dare to make a run for it, if not for the hands that grasped his wrists and lifted his hands, palms up, towards scrutiny.

“I wondered,” Alfred said and his voice was low and breathless. “Why would he go back? Why go to Cainhurst, that cursed place with no answers for him. That pale moon he chased, he would not find it there. I didn't understand that wasn’t what he was looking for among the Vilebloods.”

“Vilebloods?” Gilbert gasped when his wrists were squeezed.

“The everlasting Queen and her everlasting blood,” Alfred growled at him like a beast. “Why would he want the Queenly flesh if he already had the blood of the gods in his own veins? Why would he return to Yharnam, time after time, to the hunting ground that was already spent?”

“What are you talking about!”

“A darling friend waiting on you at the lonely window,” the man leaned in, uncomfortably close. “Untainted by the plague, unblemished by the knowledge that drives them all mad.” Soft lips whispered against Gilbert’s ear. “What wouldn’t any of us give up to have this?”

Then he leaned back and let go, as if he just didn't scare the shorter man out of his soul. Gilbert, however, didn't let him off that easily, his hand shot up and caught the lapel of the ashen vest. He pulled Alfred back, so his lips were now on level with the blonde’s ear.

“What wouldn't he give up?” He whispered, desperate for truth. “Tell me what he gave up.”

“I can’t,” warm breath whispered across his collarbone. “I would not take it from my master, the one thing that made this nightmare bearable for him.”

Gilbert barked out a bitter laugh. “I died a beast!” He rasped.

It was all insanity and madness wrapped into one, it was all impossible. If he let himself think about it just for a moment, he stood a chance of losing his mind - but at the same time, was there anything else to think about? This place was peaceful but empty, like an ornate box they've been all put in for safekeeping like a handful of trinkets.  

A large hand touched his head and guided him to lean on the sturdy shoulder; he was allowed to rest against the man he hated for the sole fact that he existed and was everything Gilbert wasn’t. This doll-like creature with glassy eyes that reflected no emotion and a perfect mouth that he wanted to punch. But weren't they all the same now? All made of porcelain and cloth.

If they’ve been remade, the Hunter might have done a better job with him!  

“Of course,” he heard Alfred muttering as a hand stroked down his back in near perfect mockery of concern. It would be perfect if the fingers attached to it didn’t try to count his ribs as they went. “Of course, we’re always too late. Always a step behind despair. Ah, my poor unlucky master.” Gilbert strained his ears to hear the near-silent mutterings of, “ _I would let you… this once, my master…_ ”

It was as if the world around them stilled altogether.

The sky moved away and the orchard thickened where they stood. The apples turned red, swollen with juice to bursting; they glistened like wet rubies amongst black leaves and gnarled branches that shielded the sun. It happened, like everything in this place, without fanfare, as if it was this way since the beginning in this weird fluid reality that changed with no rhyme or reason.

“Alfred…” Gilbert gasped, trying to pull away, trying to look him in the face. “What are you doing?”

Was he making the changes happen or communicating with the one who could? These gods he and Eileen kept talking about? Whatever it was, it was unsettling, because the snake pit was still there, behind them. Real. If that could exist then who was to say that worse things couldn't?

“We should return.”

Strong hands stopped his struggling and the former Executioner loomed once more over him. Gilbert had a half of a second to glimpse the look of intent in his glassy eyes before he was reeled back in. One hand rested on his shoulder, the other on his hip - in a gesture that echoed with some familiarity. He was pressed to the wide chest of the man in front of him who just… breathed. Slowly.  Steadily.  

“Alfred...”

A kiss was pressed on his temple and Gilbert choked on the words. Warm lips touched the corner of his eye, then the corner of his mouth - and he gasped. God damn him, he’s made a small breathless noise of surprise instead of growling at the impetuous bastard to let him go!  He just stood like a doe in front of a wolf and waited to be devoured!

“That’s enough,” Alfred said with a voice that wasn’t his and calmly stepped back, leaving Gilbert nearly hysterical. He shook his head and blinked slowly, and his eyes were the same colour again. “I would serve you, happily,” he said lightly, as if stating the fact into the air.

The Hunter sounded exasperated over their heads. “You barely have any will of your own. To take even so little, what would that make me?”

“But…”

“I have no need for an empty vessel!” The voice grew harsh. “You are a friend to me!”

Alfred chuckled, but there was no humour in it. “A friend!” He sneered. “What a great friend I have been to you time and time again! I used you for my own ends, good Hunter! How did _that_ serve you, oh friend?”  

The sky darkened overhead, first drops of rain whispered on the leaves.

“You wish to be a beast of burden, then? Nothing more?”

Alfred was silent, his expression peaceful once more. He never looked more like the Doll than in this moment. It terrified Gilbert even more than the pit of snakes, more than the slowly coming realisation of what he just experienced. He wanted to put his hands to the places he was kissed on, he wanted to burn his skin off. He wanted to escape.

Hunter’s hands rested on his shoulders again and the scenery changed around them. The orchard disappeared and instead they were standing on a sandy dune surrounded by an endless stretch of water. The sky above was cornflower-blue and the sea reflected the colour in full, adding some silver and green to the mix.

Gilbert has never seen a sea so clear.

“Here,” the Hunter said. “Is that far enough?”

 _No_ , he wanted to answer, _I wanted to escape both of you, not only him._

But this was acceptable, too. Especially in his lightheaded state.

“Was he telling the truth?” He asked. “Was he… remade? Like I was?”

“His damage was different,” the Hunter sounded honest enough. “He saw things that I didn't want him to see.”

“And they drove him mad?”

“Oh no, he was driven mad a long time ago. When I first met him, he was already insane. Everyone were, but the hunters especially. It’s getting his mind back that he can’t stand now.”  

“He’s hollow.” The statement held no heat, just a fact.

“For now. He will find himself once I’m done with everything.”

“Was…” His stomach twisted at the very thought of asking this question, but it had to be done. “Was I mad, too?”

He dreaded the answer as much as he needed to hear it.

The hum of the sea softened as the Hunter touched his back gently, a slow stroke down his spine, surprisingly calming, a hand ending up on his hip. “You were the only sane person left in this city.”

“That’s why you brought me here?” Why was he trying to hurt himself like that? “For a change of pace?”

“I brought you here, because I love you.”

A thunder could have struck him and he’d still be more animated than after hearing these words.

“...would you rather I didn’t?”

“I… would it… I mean...”

His face was red and his ears were hot, his heart was trying to break out of his chest.

“Didn’t you know?” The Hunter seemed amused.

“How could I know?!” Gilbert blurted out. The hand was still resting on his hip. “How.... you were a… a…”

“A Hunter? A man?” Chuckle. “Sadly, that obstacle is behind us now.”

“Us…?”

“I know how you feel. I always did.”

He stared at the sand under his feet, wishing for it to swallow him whole. For the sea to surge up with some massive wave and carry him away. His lungs constricted and he couldn't seem to breathe properly.

“Gilbert…”

”I…”  He had lived with this his entire adult life. From the moment he could recognise his damage, he did everything to hide all these sinful, disgusting pieces of himself, to hide them from his own mind! He thought he did well, for almost two decades now!

And to be confronted with it like that, as if it was not… as if he was so obvious that even a man who _could_ _not_ _see_ _his_ _face_ could tell…

“Gilbert!”

Fainting always seemed so pointlessly dramatic to him in all the books he has read, but, he had to admit, it had its advantages.

 

***

 

“That was very dramatic of you.”

“You can laugh at me now.“

The sand was warm under his back, the hum of the sea surprisingly soothing. Gilbert's brain decided that trying to get to terms with everything that's happened - and was happening still - was a lost cause and focused on helpless shame instead. It was easy, it wasn't anything new.

“Why would I laugh at you?” The Hunter sounded confused. “Everyone can faint, I am more concerned than anything, truth to be told.”

“Not… don't be obtuse on purpose,” Gilbert muttered, covering his eyes from the sun and not trying to hide, not at all. “I know you are smarter than that.”

“And yet I don't understand why would I laugh at you. ”

“Why wouldn't you?” Be wanted to laugh at himself, too. “It had to be a truly sorry display. A dying wretch begging for scraps of attention from a brave hunter, with nothing to offer back, but  disappointment. I really thought I'd managed to hide how pathetic I was, but it seems that I hoped for too much.”

The Hunter was silent for a time, until Gilbert almost believed that he’s alone. “For a learned man you are surprisingly daft,” he said in the end. ”Only a daft man would fall for someone like me.” A weary chuckle followed. ”With nothing, but the clothes on my back, with bloodstained hands and not even a name to hide behind… Running around with no thought in my head apart from finding a way out of that nightmare and then revenge on those who built it. What could I do for you, but stain you even more? Praying at your window like a madman and stealing the last shreds of peace you could've had in your pain!”

Gilbert sat up mid-way through the triade. His head was spinning - partially from the recent weak spell, partially from shock. This was ridiculous! “That wasn't… it wasn't like that at all!“ He protested.

“Wasn't it?” Another rough chuckle that sounded like a croak of a  wounded crow. “When I came to you for absolution time and time again, as if you'd care for a murderer that only brings you misery! A kind man like you, learned and human until the very end! Why would you fall for a monster whining at your window like some rabid cur? Was it pity? Some misplaced compassion that drove you?”

“Because you came back!“ Gilbert snapped, unable to keep the harshness from his voice. Bewildered and hurt, he struggled to his feet, but his limbs were still weak and the sand was making it difficult to find balance… God it would be so much easier if he could scream it into the Hunter’s face! “You kept coming back when no one else did! Because I was still breathing, but everyone else treated me like a corpse, like I was already dead! You were kind to me, and your voice brought me comfort when I needed it most. I was dying and you made me less afraid of it…” The sand escaped between his clenched fingers, smooth and warm, the sea hummed in the distance. A shadow fell over his hunched form and it was much bigger than a human body should be… it was probably just a cloud. “You're not a monster,” he added, just to end the argument. “Why would you put yourself down? You are much more than that!”

“Yes,” the Hunter's voice was impossibly gentle. “It does seem stupid when one puts it this way, doesn’t it?”

Ah, tricked again. He should have known, this tactic was used against him so many times already. Seems that he wasn't as learned as he thought he was.

“Are you unhappy with me?” Again, this uncertainty.

Gilbert heaved a sigh. “I don’t know. Did you make him kiss me?”

“...did I scare you?” That child-like worry. “I didn't mean to.”

Was he scared?

The first time he was asked this question, he lied. Badly. He was terrified of everything and most of all of being alone, of the Hunter not returning to his window, of the darkness encroaching on his vision. Of turning into a monster and of his Hunter's scorn. But that issue has been resolved, they have all been resolved.

Thoughts of the real world - outside of this dream, outside of even Yharnam, where the Queen dictated laws and punishments - came unbidden, filling his heart with dread. Thoughts of his thousand little crushes that were re born and died under the shadow of terror of what the slightest misstep will bring on his head.  Of  being branded a criminal only because his eyes strayed in the wrong direction one time too many. In that scenario his illness was a strange sort of a blessing; it freed him from one fear at least. And now…

He has been told that he's loved and there were no consequences to worry about. And yet what could he do with that knowledge now?

“The idea seems scary,” he admitted quietly. “It’s a sin, you know? Where I come from, it's a sin against the God.”

“A sin?” The Hunter’s voice has never sounded so dry. “Is that how your god thinks about love? In that case, I will show you something.”

_Suddenly he was standing on the the wind-swept rocky outcrop that opened into a narrow lookout on a sprawling valley filled with fallen trees._

_No…_

_Not trees. Bones._

_Bones of the giants filled the gorge, enormous in size, absurd in shape; the beings that left them had to be whole stories tall and less than human. The sun setting over the mountains in the distance dyed the horizon red and so everything below looked like it was bathed in blood. There was no birds, no animals to be seen or heard, no wind to whisper amongst these grotesque masts - only silence._

_“These are the gods of the world that tried to bury me in a nightmare of vengeance. That’s what’s left of them.” The layered voice carried over the carnage, the arms around Gilbert grew cool and numerous. “Any god that scorns what’s mine will meet the same end.”_

_His eyes hurt from looking, his head from hearing and trying not to understand… the nausea was back. Warm lips whispered against his cheek and_

He was back in the orchard, laid out on a dew covered grass. Why the orchard, again? At least Alfred was gone now.

“That was…” he choked out, curling up. His head hurt and his stomach felt cramped.

“The truth you wanted to know,” the Hunter whispered above his head. “You see, now, why I kept it from you?”

He did. Good God, he did.

“Is that what Alfred saw?”

“...maybe. He slipped out of my grip for a moment and I found him in Loran… but it’s alright now,” the voice assured. “That dream will never repeat again, I will make sure it won’t.”

All was making sense now. Slowly, but surely.

“Are you… Are you making… A whole new world? And how long is that going to take? We are stuck here forever, then...”    

“You assume that time in here corresponds with the time out there in any substantial way.”

Gilbert stilled on his side, struck by that simple answer. Hunter fell silent, aware that he’s said too much. The orchard fell silent too, suddenly bereft of the wind whistling in the branches and the birdsongs. The shadows under the trees thickened, as if the darkness tried to solidify. A shape of a hand appeared briefly and disappeared right after, a minute gleam of an intricate silver face plate, a tattered tail of a black coat.

“Bring the sounds back,” Gilbert said very slowly, carefully forming the words around the wad of cotton stuck in his throat. He pulled himself to his feet and dusted his trousers off, tried to be calm and collected. “It… it’s unsettling when they go away.”

“I can’t,” the voice came thin and wavering like a spider web on the wind. “This place only ever reacts, it can’t be reasoned with.”

“Reacts to what, exactly? Your humour? Your wants?”

“You.” The shadows shifted. “I gave you this dream.”

 

***

 

He came back on his own two feet  - the Hunter disappeared with a quiet apology and Gilbert just started to walk in a randomly picked direction. After crossing a gently sloping hill, he stepped into the meadow behind the Workshop - just in time to see one of the most wholesome scenes in his life.

A woman stood on the steps of the Workshop, short and blonde, and very handsome. Ah, so that’s where Laura and Lottie got their pert noses and narrow eyebrows from.

The girls, as it happened, were standing behind their mother, clutching at her dress and weeping loudly.

There was also a man - and Gilbert knew him even if he’s never seen him with his own eyes before. The tales of this giant travelled across Yharnam to and fro so even an outsider such as him was bound to hear them at some point.

“I am so sorry,” the man rasped, his voice low and gravelly, and full of unspoken pain. “My love, I can’t begin to tell you how sorry I am.”

“Frederik…” The woman said stepping towards him, and goodness gracious, he was kneeling and hunched, and yet he still his head reached her waist!

“I have been too weak to keep you all safe.” The man kept his head low, his eyes hidden behind a ragged fringe. ”I have failed you and whatever you ask of me, I will do it. If you want me to never darken your doorstep again…”

“I want you to stand up and come inside with me,” missus Viola Gascoigne, with her diminutive stature, quietened the beast of a man with a touch of her small hand alone. “You have to change out of these stained clothes and eat something warm,” her voice was slowly cracking at the edges, but she forced it to be strong. “Come now, up with you, the girls haven’t seen you clean shaven in ages… and I… and I…”

He stood up, slowly, tall and broad like an oak tree. She seemed tiny next to him, even more so when his arms went around her, almost hiding her from the sight.  

“Frederik... oh Frederik,” she gasped, hiding her face in his tattered scarf.

“My love,” he grumbled back.

The girls forced their way into the embrace and Gilbert left. He turned into the Workshop and went straight to his room, intending to give the reunited family their privacy. His head was still reeling, he needed to rest.

Alfred nodded to him politely, as he passed by the dining room (they had a dining room now, not just a table and a few chairs?) and Gilbert nodded back.

 

***

 

Alfred didn't make anymore advances towards him, quite on the contrary, he was perfectly polite and collected. It grated on Gilbert’s nerves something awful. He wasn’t brave enough to start this conversation - he wasn’t sure that he wanted to know the answers to his questions just yet - but the uncertainty was beginning to chip at him.

How much of that kiss was Alfred’s will and how much if it was the Hunter pushing through his skin? The probability of that was maddening in itself, the fact that these things were possible now. Monsters and miraculous blood cure were one thing - people acting the part of flesh vessels for others was completely another!

It was that slow torture again. They were on the opposite sides of some great impenetrable wall and could not interact, save for these these inconsequential touches… Like that ‘handshake’ back in the nightmare, the only time he has had a tactile proof that the Hunter wasn’t a figment of his imagination.

And Alfred was their window now . Like a pair of bashful lovers, they kissed through a curtain - just that this curtain was flesh and blood.

That night Gilbert went to bed late. The household - and it felt strange to think of them all as such, but that what they were slowly becoming - slept when he finally put his books away and climbed under the blankets.

He almost managed to drift away by the time a body slipped in next to him.

Big and strong, and even though it was dark in the room, Gilbert wasn't opening his eyes when it turned to him. He allowed himself to be pulled towards it, opened his legs to let it press even closer.

With his limbs around the man, he had to bit on his lip to stop the moans that threatened to escape him when their flesh connected and slid against one another.

“You don't have to…” The Hunter whispered and kissed his temple. His voice shook just a little bit. “No one will hear.”

“I have…” Gilbert tried to say without having to speak the words. He wasn't a fainting maiden, but some things were forbidden even in his dreams. “I have never...”

“I know.” Another soft kiss, this time on the corner of his eye. “I will make it good for you.”

He did. When the Hunter finally entered his body Gilbert was nearly incoherent and felt nothing but pleasure. His breath caught with every thrust as the tension built in his spine, only to turn his bones into liquid when he finally came. Pulling the man as close as possible, choking on the moans that escaped between their mouths. It felt like the kindest death imaginable and nothing could spoil it, not even the way the Hunter’s voice broke briefly, revealing different notes.

But that was alright, Gilbert kept his eyes closed the whole time and the Hunter didn't ask him to look. He curled up to the sound of a steady heartbeat, with a strong shoulder anchoring him to a warm human body.

“I like this dream,” he whispered into the skin against his lips. “But I don’t know how much longer I can stand it…”

In that moment he had the clarity of mind, enough of it to be aware that once he wakes up in the morning, the doubt and fear will be back. He will be even more of a mess and the Hunter will try to make him happy - and that will push him further into uncertainty. There was no good ending to this, because he couldn’t _not_ know the whole truth - even if it drove him past the point of no return.

“I am sorry,” the Hunter whispered into his hair. “So sorry.”

“You can see what this will do to me, right? To him, to them...”

The trinkets will rust and deform, no matter how beautiful the box hiding them was.

“I’m sorry,” the Hunter pulled him in tighter to the body that wasn’t even his. “I only ever wanted to save you. Just once. I have watched you die so many times. I had to kill you time after time, and you always died in pain. They have all died.”

He suspected as much. His dreams were too cruel for it not to be truth. And yet, as much pain as that truth brought him, it was nothing compared to the despair of the one by his side. The Hunter who hunted down the gods for a handful of trinkets he could not live without.   

“And now… now when I finally have the power to save you… Hah, irony, my old friend! I am not even a human any more, Gilbert.” Another kiss pressed to his temple, clumsy and desperate. “I can’t… I can’t have you, not like you deserve. I can only love you and that will never be enough!”

Gascoigne came to Gilbert's mind, kneeling before his wife, begging her forgiveness. And the Hunter had the gall to call Gilbert dramatic! When it was his ilk that went above and beyond with theatrics!

He fell asleep with a young god crying against his chest, whispering silly nothings over his ear and trying to shoulder this responsibility that was laid on him with three small words.

He woke up to the feeling of being observed. A pair of glassy green eyes stared at him from very close, their owner stretched leisurely on his side, naked as a newborn.

Gilbert pulled the blankets up to his chin, feeling hot blush spreading across his face.

“Was he good to you?” Alfred asked, face serious.

Gilbert could only nod.

“That’s good.”  

They stayed silent after that, looking at each other, each knowing what transpired and what will happen now.

“I’m sorry.”

Alfred raised his eyebrows. “What for? He loves you, you can hardly do anything about it.”

“I know, but… you… did you?”

“Yes... I think. Once. But it wasn’t right.” The man reached out and Gilbert tried to stay still when warm fingers touched his face, tilted his chin up. “I was telling the truth, I wasn’t a good friend to him, I doubt that he had many of those… in Yharnam everyone wanted something from everyone else, that’s how it worked. And then, there was _you_.”

“Me?”

“I have told you already, a real friend, someone different than the rest… some of us would give everything for that. And some did.” Alfred chuckled and it made him look younger and impossibly charming. “Devourer of the Gods, the Hunter of the Great Ones, that’s quite a catch, isn’t it, for an English wallflower that has never even been kissed before?”

Gilbert couldn't help it, be started to laugh. Long and hard, and when he finally stopped, his ribs were hurting and the man in front of him was once more kissing him for his master, like an obedient puppet he wished to be.

 

***

 

The man that gets into his carriage is blindingly handsome and in some way terrifying, but Gilbert manages to hide his fear - many things are terrifying to him, for no reason he can express, he’s learned to live with it.

He greets the man and they exchange courtesies, and , oh, Witherwoolf is not a common last name. Hah, rubbing elbows with the higher class, isn't he now? Amused, he goes back to his lecture and is interrupted once or twice by a new coughing fit he tries to weather with grace in front of his accidental companion.

The man looks at him, though, apparently interested in his bloody kerchief - and that requires some explanation before the poor cripple does himself harm by trying to get away from the perceived contagion.  

So they start to talk and it turns out that Lord Witherwoolf is not as bad as Gilbert has feared, he’s quite approachable, indeed. Much good it will do to him to make friends now, he tries to tell himself, on the doorstep of death, but his amiable nature wins.

If anything else, he can always have hope.

They say a god resides in Yharnam, maybe that’s all he needs to believe now.

 

 

 

 


End file.
